Project Communication Specialist

Project Communication Specialist Location: Rockville, MD Hybrid Schedule (3 days onsite) Contract Duration: 12 Months w/ option to extend Salary Negotiable
Resumes to Criss Brient:
Position Summary:
The Project Communication Specialist supports the successful delivery of enterprise technology projects by developing, implementing, and managing comprehensive communication strategies and plans. This role is responsible for ensuring that project stakeholders including County leadership, department heads, project teams, and the public are informed, engaged, and aligned throughout the project lifecycle. The specialist serves as a strategic partner to project managers, change management leads, and subject matter experts, translating complex technical concepts into clear, accessible messages.
Key Responsibilities:
Project Communication Support:

• Works closely with the project manager and project team to develop project communication plans and to deliver messaging, presentations, reports, and other materials that support the project.
• Identifies, plans, and delivers strategic communications content across multiple channels to advance project goals.
• Crafts communications, distributes them, and follows up on actions requested of recipients.
• Draft and produce clear, engaging content for a variety of formats.
• Develops presentation material to support the Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO).
• Translate technical content into plain language suitable for diverse audiences, including non-technical stakeholders and the public.
• Facilitates and coordinates meetings, workshops, and presentations to support effective communication between stakeholders.
• Ensures project communications align with organizational policies and best practices.
• Collects and aggregates incoming communication and responses to ensure timely and organized tracking of stakeholder feedback.
• Maintain communication logs, calendars, and impact assessments.
• Track communication effectiveness and provide reporting on outreach efforts and stakeholder sentiment.

Stakeholder Engagement & Support:

• Identify key stakeholders, audiences, and communication objectives for each initiative.
• Serve as a liaison between project managers, technical teams, and business stakeholders to ensure alignment on project objectives.
• Support stakeholder analysis and engagement strategies to foster collaboration and transparency.
• Identify potential communication risks and proactively address issues to ensure project success.
• Partner with change management leads to align messaging with change readiness and adoption strategies.

Education & Experience:

• Bachelor s degree in communications, Public Relations, Journalism, Business, or a related field.
• Minimum of 3 5 years of experience in communications, public affairs, or stakeholder engagement, preferably in a government or public sector environment.
• Experience supporting enterprise IT or business transformation projects is strongly preferred.

Skills & Competencies:

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to tailor communications to different stakeholder groups.
• Ability to understand stakeholder project needs to ensure tone, language, and format of internal communication meets those needs.
• Understands employee engagement strategies and has the ability to identify challenges and barriers and suggest actions for improvement.
• Able to provide guidance to project communication activities such as preparing and conducting surveys, analyzing and presenting survey results, conducting interviews, consultations, and focus groups.
• Knowledge of change management principles and best practices.
• Proven ability to develop and implement effective communication strategies.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, project management tools (e.g., Smartsheet), and collaboration platforms (e.g., SharePoint, Teams).
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to work independently and manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Familiarity with project management frameworks such as PMI, Agile, or ITIL is a plus.