Communications and Marketing Lead

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

About Warden AI

AI is increasingly making decisions that shape people's lives, and there is still no reliable way to know which systems deserve trust. Warden is building that trust infrastructure: the independent testing, standards and certification that let organizations demonstrate their AI is fair and compliant, and give everyone else a reason to believe them.

We started where the stakes are most personal: who gets hired. Today we audit AI hiring and HR systems for bias and compliance, working with more than 60 HR Tech vendors alongside a growing number of staffing firms and enterprise employers. In just a few years, we have become the de facto standard in the category.

Regulation is arriving fast, from NYC Local Law 144 to the EU AI Act to Colorado and whatever follows. But regulation alone has never been enough to build trust in a technology. The market also needs a credible answer to what "assured" actually means. Warden Assured is that answer: our standard and certification mark, grounded in the audits we run every day and already used by the vendors who hold it to win business. A coalition of nonprofit and advocacy partners is forming around it.

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

Why This Role Is Different

Most marketing and communications leaders get to grow a company, but few get to define how a market thinks about something new, and here you'll do both. Warden is a growing B2B business, so part of this role is classic commercial marketing: content, comms, PR, product marketing, events and partners, aimed at buyers who need to trust what they're buying.

The other part is bigger. Warden Assured is becoming the reference point for what trustworthy AI looks like, and it's your job to make that case to vendors, staffing firms, enterprises, regulators and the public. That work has more in common with a certification body or advocacy movement than a SaaS company, and it runs on storytelling, credibility and bringing people together around a shared standard.

You might come from the commercial side or the mission-driven side. Either way, you'll find one half of this role familiar and the other a chance to stretch. The foundations are built, and what we need now is someone to turn them into a story the whole industry tells.

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.

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.

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.