The Senior Communications Manager will be a highly organized do-er responsible for delivering engaging, visual communications about iNaturalist to reach and engage new audiences. This person will lead content creation, social media, and brand alignment in communications to advance iNaturalist’s role in science and biodiversity conservation.

Who you are: You’ve got a knack for short-form visual storytelling. You love finding and implementing new tools that make your work more organized and/or efficient. You’re a curious person and a nature nerd at heart. Ideally, you’re already quite familiar with iNaturalist. If not, you’re going to dive in now. You like using social media, but have healthy boundaries with it and know when not to take things too personally or seriously. You have tons of ideas, but also a keen ability to prioritize based on constraints. We’ve got a mountain of stories, and you’re excited to find and tell the best ones.

About iNaturalist

iNaturalist is the leading biodiversity platform on the planet where millions of community scientists, supported by a vast network of expert naturalists, crowdsource one of the world's largest biodiversity databases. With 4 million monthly active users and 400 thousand monthly active contributors, each month iNaturalist generates over 6 million observations of over 100 thousand distinct species. The iNaturalist database is the backbone of conservation science, supports a global network of stewards, and motivates a movement of nature advocates. Launched in 2008 and operating as a nonprofit committed to open data, iNaturalist is at the forefront of combining crowdsourcing and AI models to further our mission. 

iNaturalist's vision is a world where everyone can understand and sustain biodiversity through the practice of observing wild organisms and sharing information about them. We are an independent 501(c)3 non-profit. 

We’re looking for a Senior Communications Manager to help grow our community by reaching broad and diverse audiences and inspiring more people to get involved. This is iNaturalist’s first communications role. You’ll be joining the small Engagement team and will collaborate closely with them.

Key Responsibilities

Content Creation & Storytelling

• Identify and share powerful stories from the iNaturalist community to highlight the platform’s impact on conservation and biodiversity science.

• Contribute to the development of compelling content for social media, blog posts, newsletters, reports, presentations, and within our own platform.

• Manage iNaturalist’s social media presence to develop a calendar of content that is engaging, timely, and aligned with our mission.

Community Engagement

• Collaborate with the Director of Digital Fundraising and Engagement, Senior Community and Support Coordinator, Head of Engagement, and Head of Development to align storytelling with initiatives related to community outreach, timely events, and fundraising.

• Develop campaigns to celebrate milestones and engage users in meaningful biodiversity monitoring efforts.

• Occasionally travel (domestic and internationally) to represent iNaturalist and for team retreats.

Organization and Strategy

• Develop and implement a system for efficiently gathering, reviewing, preparing, and scheduling communications.

• Implement a system for digital asset management that facilitates storytelling.

• Identify and seize opportunities to engage new audiences and position iNaturalist as a leader in biodiversity monitoring, science communication, online communities, and community science.

• Evaluate performance of different experiments, campaigns, and strategies to inform future efforts.

Brand Alignment

• Leverage and evolve the existing brand guidelines to ensure alignment across our digital products and communication channels.

• Ensure all visual and written communications reflect iNaturalist’s mission.

Media Relations

• Respond to press inquiries.

• Draft press releases and help maintain a list of stories and media contacts.

• Collaborate with an external communications firm, as needed.

• Support other iNaturalist staff in media interviews and speaking engagements.

• 7+ years of experience in communications, public relations, or marketing, preferably in the environmental or nonprofit sector.

• Passion for nature, biodiversity, citizen science, and conservation. 

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Demonstrated ability to craft compelling narratives.

• Experience managing social media channels, digital campaigns, and content creation.

• Strong project management skills and ability to prioritize competing deadlines.

• Experience collaborating across departments and with external partners.

• Familiarity with graphic design tools like Canva.

Nice to have:

• Familiarity with iNaturalist.

• Written fluency in another language commonly used in the iNaturalist community (e.g. Spanish).

• Basic data analysis skills for evaluating communication and marketing performance.

• Familiarity with reading and interpreting scientific literature.

• Experience working with media and building relationships with journalists.

• Experience with digital asset management.

Why it’s Great to work at iNaturalist 

 A mission that matters. 

With species going extinct daily, the need to protect and document biodiversity has never been more essential. iNaturalist has become the go-to data source to measure biodiversity conservation and protection. 

A great team.

Smart, hard-working nature lovers make up our small team. We live in countries all over the world but come together each day to further our mission. For this position, to facilitate collaboration across time zones, we require that you be a resident of and eligible to work in the lower 48 states (i.e., not Alaska or Hawaii). 

Flexible work. 

We are a virtual team, and most of this position’s work can be performed from home or wherever you are comfortable. You’ll even get some funds to set up your office and a monthly stipend to defray some of the costs. Once a year we travel to an annual, nature-filled team retreat. 

Competitive pay.

The salary for this full-time position is $115,350.75 per year, non-negotiable. 

Great benefits.

We offer a pretty awesome benefits package, including medical, dental, vision and life insurance, plus an employer-funded health reimbursement account and employee-funded flexible spending accounts. There is a 401k plan with a 5% match. This position is eligible for unlimited personal time off, and unlike some tech companies, we really mean it – everyone is expected to take a minimum of three weeks a year off. Eligible new parents get up to 12 weeks of paid leave and an additional 18 of unpaid. 

Application process

Instead of a cover letter, we will ask you to answer a few questions that will be reviewed (by real people, not AI) and assessed separately from each other, your resume, and your name. The hiring team will review your answers and resume in a batch of answers and resumes from other candidates in randomized orders. Randomization and anonymization of each element in the initial review process allows us to focus on the content of your answers, which minimizes bias.

Applied asks for your demographic information, but we never see it in association with you—only summarized in aggregate. We use it to assess the overall demographics of the candidate pool.

After initial review of applications on a rolling basis, advancing candidates will be asked to answer a few more questions before candidates are selected for interviews. 

Timeline Summary:

• Application: Jan/Feb

• Written follow up: Jan/Feb

• Interviews: Feb

• Offer: Feb/Mar

• Ideal start date: March