Job description

ABOUT MATTER Matter Intelligence is building a first-of-its-kind physical intelligence company at the intersection of advanced sensor hardware, AI, and compute. Our team of former NASA, JPL, Palantir, and Google leaders are developing next-generation airborne and spaceborne sensing systems and the intelligence products that turn those observations into detailed understanding of the physical world. We are looking for the person who will make the world understand why that matters. THE ROLE Matter is hiring a Head of Marketing & Communications to own how the company—and the people building it—show up in the world. This is not a traditional corporate marketing job. We are looking for someone who can build a brand people want to be associated with. Someone who can make an obscure technical breakthrough feel inevitable, make the right engineer want to quit their job and join Matter, make an investor feel like they are discovering the next great company before everyone else does, and make the technology community pay attention every time Matter has something to say. You will own Matter's brand, communications, content, social media, PR, executive presence, events, website, and broader cultural footprint. You will work directly with the CEO and leadership team to decide what stories Matter tells, how we tell them, where we tell them, and who needs to hear them. Most importantly, you need taste. You should have strong instincts about what is interesting, what looks good, what sounds intelligent, what feels forced, and what will actually resonate with the kinds of people Matter wants to attract and the cultural moment we’re in. You will be expected to move quickly, create from nothing, and produce results without waiting for someone to hand you a playbook. WHAT YOU'LL OWN BUILD THE MATTER BRAND Own and continually sharpen Matter's identity, voice, visual language, and position in the market. Make Matter feel like one of the most ambitious, technically credible, and culturally interesting companies being built. Guide the creative direction behind everything we put into the world—from our website and launch materials to recruiting collateral, photography, videos, presentations, merchandise, events, and physical spaces. Maintain an exceptionally high bar for quality. Matter should never look or sound like a generic aerospace company, defense contractor, AI startup, or corporate marketing department. Build a team of designers, photographers, filmmakers, web developers, agencies, and other creative vendors when necessary—but be capable of doing a surprising amount yourself. MAKE MATTER IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE Own Matter's presence across X, LinkedIn, and emerging platforms Develop a social strategy that materially grows Matter's audience and creates sustained interest around what we are building. Turn engineering milestones, flight tests, satellite development, technical discoveries, company culture, customer work, and the people behind Matter into compelling stories. Create moments people want to talk about, share, and be part of. Build anticipation around launches and milestones rather than simply announcing them after they happen. Know when Matter should participate in a conversation, when we should create the conversation, and when we should stay quiet. The goal isn't "engagement." The goal is to create genuine gravity around Matter and grow mindshare with key audiences. BUILD THE CEO INTO A RECOGNIZED TECHNOLOGY VOICE Own and dramatically expand the CEO's external presence. Develop his voice and content across X and LinkedIn and help establish him as a respected, interesting, and recognizable voice across deep tech, AI, space, hardware, and venture-backed technology. Ghostwrite posts, essays, threads, commentary, talks, and other content while preserving an authentic voice. Create opportunities for him to appear on the right podcasts, stages, panels, dinners, salons, conferences, and private gatherings. Know which rooms matter—and find a way to get Matter into them. Build relationships with podcast hosts, conference organizers, founders, investors, journalists, researchers, creators, and other influential members of the technology ecosystem. You should think beyond traditional PR. Your job is to help create an aura around the founder and company that compounds over time. OWN PRESS AND NARRATIVE Build relationships with journalists, editors, publications, newsletters, and other media covering technology, AI, aerospace, defense, science, and startups. Generate meaningful earned media for Matter. Develop stories journalists actually want to write rather than simply sending press releases. Understand how news cycles work and recognize opportunities to put Matter into relevant conversations. Create launch strategies around major technical and company milestones. Know when to pitch an exclusive, when to build momentum through social, when to embargo a story, when to provide background, and when to let the technology speak for itself. Develop Matter's broader narrative and ensure that our message remains consistent as the company expands across markets and products. TURN DEEP TECHNOLOGY INTO GREAT STORIES You need to be an exceptional writer. Matter is building complicated things. You should be capable of sitting with an optical engineer, AI researcher, satellite engineer, or customer, understanding what is genuinely interesting about their work, and translating it into something intelligent people actually want to read. Own Matter's long-form editorial platform and blog. Develop technical explainers, essays, company announcements, opinion pieces, founder communications, product stories, interviews, launch content, and behind-the-scenes engineering stories. Ghostwrite for executives, engineers, researchers, and other members of the team. Use LLMs aggressively where they make you faster—but have enough writing ability and judgment that the final product never sounds like it came from one. You should care obsessively about language. BUILD MATTER'S PLACE IN THE DEEP-TECH ECOSYSTEM Matter should be present wherever the future of technology is being built. You will own our strategy for conferences, speaking engagements, industry gatherings, private events, dinners, launch events, and other opportunities to bring people into the Matter ecosystem. Determine which conferences are actually worth attending. Get Matter executives and technical leaders onto the right stages. Develop creative activations around major events instead of defaulting to a booth and a banner. Help Matter host its own dinners, technical salons, launch events, recruiting events, and gatherings. Build relationships across the deep-tech, AI, space, defense-tech, and venture communities. We want someone who already participates in these worlds—not someone learning about them for the first time. MAKE GREAT PEOPLE WANT TO JOIN MATTER Marketing at Matter is also recruiting. Partner with leadership and recruiting to make Matter one of the companies that exceptional engineers and researchers hear about and want to work for. Show people what it feels like to build here. Work with the team to understand what’s special about what they’re making, the stories that can be told, and help the world understand what makes us special. Tell the stories of our engineers, missions, technology, facilities, aircraft, satellites, experiments, failures, breakthroughs, and ambitions. Develop recruiting campaigns and content that reach technical communities traditional recruiters cannot. Create the kind of company presence that causes exceptional people to send us an email simply because they want to be involved. MAKE INVESTORS WANT IN Help Matter become one of the companies that the venture ecosystem talks about before a fundraising process ever begins. Tell our technical and company story in a way that communicates both the magnitude of what we are building and the credibility of the people building it. Understand how the venture-backed technology ecosystem works, how information travels through it, which communities shape perception, and how great companies build momentum. Create FOMO without manufacturing hype. WHO YOU ARE You are probably unusually online. You follow great technology companies before everyone else starts talking about them. You know which founders are interesting, which writers are worth reading, which podcasts matter, which conferences are actually good, and which parties everyone somehow ends up at. You understand the culture of venture-backed deep tech. You have extremely strong taste and equally strong opinions about what makes great technology marketing. You are an exceptional writer. You can understand highly technical subjects without flattening them into meaningless marketing language. You know how to make complicated things feel understandable without making them feel simple. You can move comfortably between an engineering lab, a journalist's inbox, a founder dinner, a conference backstage, and a social media feed. You are highly creative but intensely results-oriented. You have a huge motor. You move quickly, follow through relentlessly, and create opportunities rather than waiting for them. You are humble enough to do whatever needs to get done. One day you might be developing the narrative for a major satellite announcement. The next you might be editing a CEO post, coordinating a photographer, fixing copy on the website, pitching a journalist, finding a dinner invitation, reviewing merchandise samples, and helping set up an event. None of those things should feel beneath you. WHAT WE CARE ABOUT We care much more about what you have actually made happen than the exact titles you've held. Strong candidates may have backgrounds in startup communications, technology journalism, venture, founder-led media, brand, growth, content, creative direction, PR, or some combination of all of them. What matters is that you can demonstrate: - Exceptional writing. - Exceptional taste. - A track record of growing audiences. - An instinct for finding and telling great stories. - Deep familiarity with the venture-backed technology ecosystem. - Relationships across media, technology, founders, investors, creators, or events. - The ability to generate earned attention rather than simply buy it. - Comfort working directly with founders and senior executives. - The ability to understand technical products and communicate them credibly. - High agency and an ability to operate with very little structure. - Speed, creativity, judgment, and relentless follow-through. Experience in deep tech, space, AI, hardware, defense technology, robotics, science, or similarly technical industries is highly valuable. YOU MIGHT BE A GREAT FIT IF You see an incredible engineering test and immediately know there are five different stories hiding inside it. You have rewritten a company's announcement because it was technically impressive but painfully boring. You have opinions about which technology companies have great brands—and can explain precisely why. You believe most corporate social media is terrible. You know that building a founder's public profile involves much more than scheduling posts. You understand that sometimes the most important marketing opportunity happens at a 20-person dinner rather than a 20,000-person conference. You can call a journalist, text a founder, brief a designer, interview an engineer, edit an essay, and review a website without changing personalities. You don't need to be told exactly what to do next. And when something important is happening at Matter, your instinct is: HOW DO WE MAKE THE RIGHT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT THIS? THE MISSION Your job is ultimately simple: MAKE MATTER A COMPANY THAT THE WORLD'S BEST ENGINEERS WANT TO JOIN, THE WORLD'S BEST INVESTORS WANT TO BACK, CUSTOMERS WANT TO WORK WITH, JOURNALISTS WANT TO WRITE ABOUT, AND THE TECHNOLOGY ECOSYSTEM FEELS IT CANNOT AFFORD TO IGNORE. LOCATION This role is based in San Francisco, CA, and requires onsite work. ITAR REQUIREMENTS To comply with U.S. export regulations, applicants must be one of the following: - A U.S. citizen or national - A lawful permanent resident (green card holder) - Eligible to obtain required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State EMPLOYEE OFFERINGS AND BENEFITS At Matter, we believe in rewarding high performance and providing the support you need to thrive. Our compensation and benefits package includes: - Competitive compensation based on experience - Early-stage equity package - 100% employer-paid health, dental, and vision coverage - Opportunity to work on novel sensing, data, and AI systems with real-world deployment paths to the largest industries in the world Matter Intelligence is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds who can raise the ambition and performance of the team.

Requirements

Must-haves

Matter is hiring a Head of Marketing & Communications to own how the company—and the people building it—show up in the world.
You will be expected to move quickly, create from nothing, and produce results without waiting for someone to hand you a playbook.
Own and continually sharpen Matter's identity, voice, visual language, and position in the market.
Make Matter feel like one of the most ambitious, technically credible, and culturally interesting companies being built.
Guide the creative direction behind everything we put into the world—from our website and launch materials to recruiting collateral, photography, videos, presentations, merchandise, events, and physical spaces.
Maintain an exceptionally high bar for quality. Matter should never look or sound like a generic aerospace company, defense contractor, AI startup, or corporate marketing department.
Build a team of designers, photographers, filmmakers, web developers, agencies, and other creative vendors when necessary—but be capable of doing a surprising amount yourself.
Own Matter's presence across X, LinkedIn, and emerging platforms
Develop a social strategy that materially grows Matter's audience and creates sustained interest around what we are building.
Turn engineering milestones, flight tests, satellite development, technical discoveries, company culture, customer work, and the people behind Matter into compelling stories.
Create moments people want to talk about, share, and be part of.
Build anticipation around launches and milestones rather than simply announcing them after they happen.
Know when Matter should participate in a conversation, when we should create the conversation, and when we should stay quiet.
The goal isn't "engagement." The goal is to create genuine gravity around Matter and grow mindshare with key audiences.
BUILD THE CEO INTO A RECOGNIZED TECHNOLOGY VOICE
Own and dramatically expand the CEO's external presence.
Develop his voice and content across X and LinkedIn and help establish him as a respected, interesting, and recognizable voice across deep tech, AI, space, hardware, and venture-backed technology.
Ghostwrite posts, essays, threads, commentary, talks, and other content while preserving an authentic voice.
Create opportunities for him to appear on the right podcasts, stages, panels, dinners, salons, conferences, and private gatherings.
Know which rooms matter—and find a way to get Matter into them.
Build relationships with podcast hosts, conference organizers, founders, investors, journalists, researchers, creators, and other influential members of the technology ecosystem.
You should think beyond traditional PR. Your job is to help create an aura around the founder and company that compounds over time.
Build relationships with journalists, editors, publications, newsletters, and other media covering technology, AI, aerospace, defense, science, and startups.
Generate meaningful earned media for Matter.

Nice-to-haves

None flagged.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

Platform: ashby
Effort: quick

Benefits

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Dental

Vision