About You

We're looking for a creative, dogged media strategist who can supercharge our entire operation. You have 8-10 years of experience building relationships with top-tier reporters and finding unexpected angles that get stories placed. You may have come from a network's earned media operation, a top-tier agency's media team, or a high-performing in-house role—but wherever you've been, you've consistently delivered the kind of placements that can create material impact.

What makes you different:

• You find the angle most miss. You don't default to obvious narratives—you widen the aperture, looking for where your client's story intersects with cultural conversations already happening in the zeitgeist.

• You have real relationships with reporters who matter. Not a mass email list—actual connections with journalists at top-tier outlets. You've worked alongside many of these reporters, you understand their beats intimately, and you know how to smartly navigate the ecosystem.

• You hustle. You pivot quickly when one avenue closes. You see rejection as redirection, not failure.

• You're a creative problem-solver. You can take a budget model and turn it into election coverage, an autonomous vehicle company and find the aging population angle, an education tech platform and spot the childhood equity narrative.

• You're a player-coach. You'll manage 2-3 junior staff per account, but you also get your hands dirty—making the calls, crafting the pitches, securing the exclusives.

• You understand stakeholder dynamics beyond media. You know how business, policy, and reputation intersect. Ideally, you’ve been exposed to high-stakes situations in multiple organizational contexts.

Job Responsibilities

You’ll be directly and principally responsible for managing all aspects of earned media strategy and execution on a number of accounts, as well as managing media outreach efforts on others. Specifically, you’ll:

• Build and maintain strategic media relationships that result in exclusives, commentary, and top-tier features

• Find creative angles through rigorous landscape analysis, identifying where client narratives intersect with current conversations in media, policy, and culture

• Manage junior team members on press outreach, pitch development, and media relationship-building

• Conduct original research and polling when needed to create news rather than respond to it

• Set up off-the-record briefings, background conversations, and exclusive access opportunities that position clients as go-to sources

• Contribute to new business efforts by articulating our earned media differentiation and demonstrating the power of creative storytelling

Requirements:

• Based in Washington, DC and willing to spend 4-5 days per week in person with our team

• 5-8 years of experience in media relations, with demonstrated ability to secure top-tier placements

• Proven track record of building and maintaining relationships with journalists at major outlets

• Experience in high-stakes, fast-paced environments (politics, startups, networks, premier agencies)

• Player-coach mentality with team management experience

• Deep commitment to client service and value delivery

About Us

Velocity is a boutique strategic communications firm built for the modern era—where stakeholder convergence, format evolution, and AI disruption demand a fundamentally different approach. In two years, we've attracted dozens of high-impact, high-influence clients spanning Fortune 500 corporations, growth-stage disruptors, and cause-based organizations. We've moved major policy decisions, vaulted transformative executives into top-tier news cycles, and been lauded publicly as an industry disruptor. 

When it comes to earned media, our differentiation is simple: We find the angles others miss, we cultivate relationships for exclusives rather than spray-and-pray pitches, and we can actually call on media contacts who matter. Now, as we expand our core strategic communications business, we're hiring our first senior media relations leader.