Head of Corporate Narrative & Strategy

Worker Type

Regular

Job Description

Summary

AV competes in a market where buyers form a view of a company long before a procurement conversation starts. Program offices, allied governments, investors, policymakers, and prospective engineers all arrive with a position already formed, assembled from published work, analyst coverage, industry commentary, and increasingly from AI systems answering questions on their behalf. This role owns what those audiences find and how it adds up.

The Head of Corporate Narrative & Strategy owns AV's enterprise narrative architecture, the thought leadership program that carries it into the market, the content strategy behind both, and the measurement discipline that shows whether any of it is working. The role reports to the VP of Marketing & Communications and leads the narrative function, starting with one direct report and a defined path to a small team.

The mandate is to make narrative operational. AV runs six business units with distinct customers, technologies, and acquisition paths, and the company is understood best when their work resolves into one coherent market position rather than six unrelated ones. That requires message pillars that hold across the portfolio, an editorial system that produces at a predictable cadence, and evidence that the narrative is reaching the audiences that matter.

This is not a content production role and it is not media relations. Media logistics, public affairs coordination, Tier 1 media relationships, and release execution sit with Industry & Media Relations. This role sets what AV says and why, works upstream of the channels that carry it, and operates as the narrative counterpart to business unit leadership, Product Marketing, and the executive team.

Position Responsibilities

Enterprise Narrative Architecture

- Own AV's core corporate narrative, tiered messaging framework, and the positioning that connects company strategy to everything the company says externally.

- Maintain the narrative architecture that links enterprise strategy to executive messaging, thought leadership, campaign content, corporate storytelling, and talent communications, so the portfolio reads as one company.

- Own enterprise-level competitive positioning in external messaging against the named peer set, aligned with Product Marketing's ownership of portfolio and product-level competitive positioning.

- Translate mission outcomes, program milestones, and technical capability into narrative that holds up with government customers, allied partners, investors, and industry audiences.

Enterprise Thought Leadership

- Own AV's thought leadership program end to end: topic strategy, SME roster, qualification criteria, editorial framework, development process, distribution, and measurement.

- Scale the program across every business unit, sequencing content against the questions buyers are actually deciding rather than against internal announcement calendars.

- Own byline, speaking, award, and platform strategy for AV and its executives, including subject selection, voice assignment, ghostwriting, and venue prioritization.

- Align thought leadership output to corporate campaigns so the program compounds rather than running parallel to the rest of marketing.

Executive Narrative Advisory

- Serve as the narrative advisor to the VP of Marketing & Communications and to selected executive leaders and designated thought leaders.

- Brief executive leadership on messaging priorities, share of voice, external framing, and emerging narrative risk.

- Build the framing frameworks used in investor, government-facing, and industry engagements, developed jointly with Investor Relations and Washington Operations and consistent with the enterprise narrative.

Content Strategy & Narrative Governance

- Own the enterprise content architecture: the content types, formats, and editorial system through which narrative, technical expertise, customer outcomes, and company milestones reach each audience and channel.

- Hold narrative review and approval on press releases and major external content, assessing framing, message alignment, positioning, and consistency with enterprise priorities. Release authority remains with Industry & Media Relations.

- Set the standards and operating model other teams use to apply the narrative, so consistency comes from a shared system rather than from case-by-case review.

Measurement & Narrative Performance

- Own the KPI, content performance, and share of voice framework for corporate communications, and the discipline of deciding on evidence rather than output volume.

- Own AV's AI visibility measurement capability: the baseline, methodology, and recurring tracking of how AI systems represent the company against its peer set, reported as a standing enterprise metric.

- Identify narrative gaps from the data and convert them into content priorities with named owners and dates.

Business Linkage

- Establish a standing connection between enterprise narrative and Sales and Business Development priorities so narrative and content intentionally support strategic pursuits.

- Map message pillars to priority pursuits and target audiences, with a review cadence agreed with Business Development and evidence that the material is used in the field.

Function Leadership

- Lead the corporate narrative function, setting direction across narrative architecture, thought leadership, content strategy, executive messaging, and measurement.

- Manage and develop a direct report supporting the narrative function, with a path to a small team as the function scales.

- Own a defined corporate narrative budget covering thought leadership, content development and distribution, and measurement, managed against named deliverables and a defined approval threshold.

Basic Qualifications (Required Skills & Experience)

- 12+ years in communications, editorial, or narrative strategy, including meaningful time in defense, aerospace, government, or another regulated environment where message accuracy carries consequence.

- Demonstrated ownership of an enterprise messaging architecture: you can show a narrative document, message framework, and positioning system you authored and that other teams actually used.

- Built a thought leadership or editorial program from the ground up, including the roster, the framework, and the operating cadence, not only the individual pieces.

- Fluency in how defense buyers form views: program of record lifecycles, acquisition timelines, the role of primes and non-traditional entrants, and the difference between a capability claim and operational proof.

- Technical translation: you can take engineering data, test results, and program detail and make them legible to executives, investors, and the public without losing accuracy.

- Measurement literacy. You define what narrative success looks like in numbers, build the tracking, and change the plan when the numbers say to.

- Ability to operate within export control, classification, and public-release constraints without diluting message strength.

- Credibility with technical and program stakeholders. Engineers and program leads treat you as a partner to the work rather than a service function downstream of it.

Other Qualifications & Desired Competencies

- People management experience, or demonstrated functional leadership with workstream ownership and accountability for others' output.

- Journalism, editorial, or broadcast background with a record of publishing under deadline.

- Working knowledge of how AI systems surface and cite company content, and what changes their answers.