Communications and Marketing Lead

Austin, TX (hybrid, 3 days/week in office) Full-time · US work authorization required

About Warden AI

Warden AI is an independent auditor of AI hiring and HR systems, testing them for bias and compliance. We have become the de facto industry standard in HR Tech, working with more than 60 vendors, alongside a growing number of staffing firms and enterprise employers.

Regulation is arriving quickly, from NYC Local Law 144 to the EU AI Act to Colorado and whatever follows them, but regulation on its own has never been enough to build trust in a technology. What the market needs alongside it is a clear and credible answer to what "assured" actually means when an AI system is deciding who gets hired. Warden Assured is that answer: our standard and our certification mark, grounded in the audits we run every day, and already used by the vendors who hold it to win business of their own. A coalition of nonprofit and advocacy partners is forming around it.

We are ten people today, growing quickly on the back of real revenue and customers who renew, and we are deliberately profitable-minded rather than growth-at-all-costs.

Why This Role Is Different

Warden is two things at once - a B2B product business and an industry standard. This role sits across both.

The product side will feel familiar to anyone who has worked in b2b marketing roles across content, comms, PR, product marketing, events and partner marketing. The majority of Warden’s customer base is HR Tech vendors - however we’re starting to see a shift toward larger staffing firms and enterprise employers, with audiences including general counsels, compliance leaders and procurement leaders.

The other side of the role focuses on marketing our standard. Being Warden Assured already carries real weight with the vendors who hold it but there is still lots more work to take it to market. This role will focus on improving and shaping how the market talks about AI assurance, and getting vendors, staffing firms and enterprises to understand why they need the Warden Assured mark for their business. This part will lean heavily into storytelling and movement-building - looking closer to what a certification body or an advocacy organization does than a SaaS business.

And finally. Our marketing foundations have been built, but we need someone to take them to the next level. Our current marketing manager, who will report into this role, has been building from the ground up, focusing on brand development, product marketing, day-to-day customer launch execution and promotion, and social media. We need a leader to manage and grow them, helping support and guide their day-to-day work, while also taking on their own remit and setting the strategy for the function.

This role will also work closely with the founders, our Head of Responsible AI and the product and engineering teams.

Who We're Looking For

We are looking for someone at the point where they are ready to take ownership and lead. That might mean you have spent time close to whoever led the work, doing a good deal of the thinking and most of the execution, and have formed a clear view of what you would do differently given the chance.

What You'll Own

Story and messaging

- Ownership of the Warden narrative, meaning what we say, in what words, and why anyone outside the company should care
- The messaging architecture behind Warden Assured, translating a rigorous technical standard into language that a CEO, a journalist and a job candidate can each make sense of
- Getting the words right, which here means testing what actually lands with a sceptical buyer, a regulator or a candidate, and rewriting until it does
- Ownership of the Warden brand and how it evolves, including a website refresh and a revised brand identity

Movement-building

- Supporting the Warden Assured coalition of nonprofit and advocacy partners as a genuine industry movement rather than a marketing program
- Bringing new partners into that coalition and giving the existing ones something worth showing up for
- Our external presence across press, analysts, partners and the wider industry
- Supporting our external voices, including talks, op-eds, podcasts and written commentary

What our Marketing Manager will own, with support from you

- Customer marketing and onboarding, making sure every new vendor, staffing firm or enterprise gets set up to see value fast
- Event prep, including the webinars and materials that support them
- Sales collateral, the decks, one-pagers and battlecards that help the team sell with confidence
- Product launches, from planning through to launch and promotion

What Success Looks Like in Your First 90 Days

- You will understand the business and the audit methodology behind it
- You can tell the Warden story cold to a journalist, a customer or a sceptic, and you have begun sharpening how the rest of us tell it
- You’ve made progress on revamping Warden’s messaging and positioning to the market
- You know our coalition partners and have formed a view on what the movement needs next

Requirements

You'll Be a Great Fit If…

- You have spent 8+ years in comms and/ OR marketing roles
- You have experience of selling to enterprise buyers and/ OR have experience working in a nonprofit, standard and certification body, B Corp or an advocacy organisations
- You’re early in the leadership part of your career but have worked closely with a marketing lead and are ready to take then next step up
- You are a thoughtful, strategic, organised thinker with high attention to detail
- You are a genuinely strong writer and storyteller, able to take something abstract and technical and make a stranger care about it, including the lived experience at the heart of this work
- You have a feel for movements, and you understand that persuading an industry to adopt a shared standard is a different craft from persuading a buyer to sign, and that the second does not teach you the first
- You’re a can-do person, you like being in the weeds and making stuff happen
- You are comfortable growing into the scope before the title reflects it

This Role Isn't for You If…

- You are looking for a demand generation or growth role, because pipeline generation is not the priority here
- You need direct reports, a large budget or an established brand in order to do your best work
- You prefer fully remote working, or are not open to being in Austin three days a week
- You want a defined playbook, which the product marketing largely has and the movement-building does not

Benefits

- $120,000–$160,000 base salary
- Meaningful equity (4 year vest, 1 year cliff)
- Healthcare coverage
- 18 days paid time off, plus 8 US public holidays and sick leave
- Flexible / hybrid working environment

Hiring Process

We move quickly, and we aim to make this a thoughtful and structured experience, since it is as much about you assessing us as it is the other way around.

- Founder Screen (30 min). Intro chat with our CEO to align on your background and the role.
- Craft Deep Dive (45 min). Your experience across communications and marketing, how you've built narratives and brought people along, and what you'd have done differently.
- Written Exercise. A short task on a real Warden problem, with the brief shared in advance.
- Exercise Review (45 min). Discussion of your work with the CEO and a member of the team.
- Culture & Values Fit (45 min, ideally in person). Conversation with our cofounders about how you operate in early-stage environments.
- Reference Checks & Offer . We move quickly from references to a clear offer.