Communications Specialist

Job Title: Strategic Communication Lead

Location: Taylor, TX-Hybrid (2 days/week onsite)

Duration: 12 Months

Role Overview

This is a senior, individual-contributor engagement to build enduring strategic communication standards, including style guides, templates, and visual storytelling practices, for Market Intelligence & Strategy team. The contractor leverages existing templates and branding guidelines as a foundation and builds upon them to create new communication standards and products for the team's use.

The contractor brings strategic communication and visual storytelling expertise, not technical modeling or engineering knowledge, and works independently as an individual contributor with no supervisory responsibility.

This role has no external stakeholder engagement responsibilities. However, the standards it establishes govern materials that are themselves external-facing, including Board materials, reports, and public presentation materials, and the contractor reviews and may produce such deliverables in that context. This is a build-and-transfer engagement. The objective is to establish durable communication standards and practices that staff can apply and sustain after the engagement ends, not to establish a permanent operating role.

Key Responsibilities

Standards & Template Development

· Develop a written style guide covering writing best practices for Market Intelligence & Strategy communications.

· Develop presentation and report templates, building upon existing templates and branding guidelines.

· Develop guidelines and best practices for how the team presents data, informed by industry best practice (e.g., Tufte principles) and brand standards.

Capability Building & Knowledge Transfer

· Develop training materials on visual storytelling techniques, including chart, table, and graphic design.

· Deliver in-person training to the team as a whole and to individual team members.

· Serve as subject matter expert on communication standards, providing ongoing guidance to team members.

Deliverable Review & Quality Control

· Review team deliverables (reports, presentations, and related materials) against established communication standards prior to publication.

· Provide feedback to individual contributors to improve deliverable quality and reinforce standards adoption.

· Produce or directly contribute to select external-facing deliverables (e.g., Board materials, reports, public presentation materials) as requested.

Example Deliverables

A governing Statement of Work specifies all deliverables. Representative deliverables include:

· A written style guide for Market Intelligence & Strategy communications.

· Presentation and report templates built upon existing templates and branding guidelines.

· Training materials on visual storytelling techniques (charts, tables, graphics).

· In-person training sessions delivered to the team, both as a group and individually.

· Documented review and feedback on team deliverables prior to publication.

Required Skills

· Strong writing, editing, and visual storytelling skills, including chart, table, and graphic design informed by recognized data-visualization best practice (e.g., Tufte principles).

· Demonstrated ability to develop style guides, templates, and communication standards for an organization or team.

· Strong training and coaching skills, including the ability to deliver feedback that improves individual and team output.

· Ability to adapt communication standards to a technical, data-driven environment.

· Experience with, or ability to work within, existing brand and template systems rather than starting from a blank page.

Experience

· Minimum 5 years of relevant experience in strategic communications, technical writing, or visual/graphic design. 10 or more years preferred. Experience in the power sector or another technical/regulated industry is required.

Education

· Bachelor's degree in Communications, Journalism, Technical Writing, Graphic Design, or a related discipline, or equivalent knowledge gained through a combination of education and experience.

EEO Statement:

Mindlance is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate in employment on the basis of Minority/Gender/Disability/Religion/LGBTQI/Age/Veterans.