Brand and Communications Manager

DescriptionActiveState enables DevOps, InfoSec, and Development teams to improve their security posture while simultaneously increasing productivity and innovation to deliver secure applications faster.We are the only solution in the market today that offers vulnerability-free open source language packages and containers and Intelligent Remediation, which identifies which vulnerabilities to prioritize, assesses the impact of updates causing breaking changes, prioritizes what to fix first, securely builds open source packages from source, and facilitates the build and deploy process to get fixes into production quickly and easily.All from the trusted partner that pioneered and continues to lead enterprise adoption and use of open source software. This position is open to full-time telecommuters anywhere in Canada or continental US. ActiveState is seeking an outcomes-driven Senior Manager or highly experienced Individual Contributor to lead our external communications strategy. This role is the outward-facing steward of the ActiveState brand, focusing on Analysts, Press/Media, and Industry Influencers to drive awareness and thought leadership in the security, devops, and developer ecosystem. Your primary focus will be on understanding the market, proactively seeking out and creating marketable moments, and translating ActiveState's product story into compelling, newsworthy narratives for external audiences. Key Responsibilities

• Market Sensing & Opportunity Creation: Maintain a constant, keen awareness of the competitive landscape, market trends, and industry news to identify and proactively create opportunities for earned media coverage and analyst mindshare.

• Outward Network Building: Serve as the primary point of contact for external communication partners, actively building and maintaining strong relationships with key industry analysts (AR), press/journalists (PR), and technical influencers.

• Urgent Storytelling & Execution: Operate with a strong sense of urgency to capture market attention. Develop and deliver clear, compelling narratives and creative angles that connect market activity with ActiveState’s unique value proposition.

• Public Relations (PR) & Analyst Relations (AR): Own the soup-to-nuts strategy and execution for all PR and AR activities, including proactive outreach, managing inbound media requests, and coordinating product release and partnership announcements.

• Influencer Engagement: Develop and execute strategies to engage technical and industry influencers to drive authentic discussion and organic reach for ActiveState products and platforms.

• Brand Consistency: Ensure a unified tone and voice, and that our brand messaging is consistently and accurately represented across all external media and analyst channels.

• Results Reporting: Collaborate with the Marketing team to report on contributions to awareness, mindshare, and pipeline, demonstrating the impact of external communications efforts.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• Experience: 5+ years of experience in marketing or communications, with a significant focus on Public Relations, Analyst Relations, or Media/Influencer relations.

• Soft Attributes & Networking: A proven strong networker with a demonstrable desire and ability to build relationships and communicate effectively with people outside the company walls (e.g., press, influencers, analysts).

• Bias for Action: Possesses a 'gets stuff done' attitude, operates with urgency, and is able to rapidly connect market events with internal ActiveState initiatives to seize opportunities.

• Communication Skills: Strong brand voice and exceptional ability to write quickly, creatively, and deliver high-quality, impactful content on deadline.

• Technical Acumen: Ability to rapidly grasp and communicate complex technical concepts (security, developer products) to external non-technical and technical media/analyst audiences.

• Tools: Firsthand experience with PR/AR management tools and managing a company-wide communications calendar is required.

Domain Expertise: Domain expertise in security and developer products is a significant plus.

Benefits

• Working for a stable and growing company that offers the environment and personal growth potential of a start-up as well as the stability of a successful business with established revenue.

• The chance to grow and grow with a team.

• The chance to collaborate with a smart, considerate, enthusiastic team of people.

• The chance to work on a project that will change the work lives of developers and security professionals around the world, including your own!

• Competitive salary and bonus plan.

• Comprehensive benefits package and health/wellness credit program.

• Unlimited PTO

• Ability to work from anywhere.