Job Description
Job Title: Principal Consultant – Communications and Experience (On-Site)
Granicus Experience Group
Sacramento, CA
Summary Description
The Granicus Experience Group (GXG) is Granicus’ experience design agency, a cross-functional team of strategists, analysts, communicators and Granicus technology experts focused on customer experience and digital communications. We leverage best-in-class human-centered practices and a design-thinking approach to help our federal, state and local government customers better connect with the people they serve. We discover better insights, build better experiences, and achieve better outcomes.
GXG is seeking a Principal Consultant for the Communications Practice Area to serve as the on-site strategic authority for a large, complex Medi-Cal program in California. This role defines the long-term communications and experience strategy, establishes the frameworks and methodologies used to deliver the work, and advises executive stakeholders on program direction, governance, audience engagement, and customer experience transformation.
The Principal translates lessons from the Medi-Cal engagement into durable, reusable approaches for GXG and future state health and human services programs. This individual shapes functional standards, influences Granicus service and product direction, and leads innovation across multichannel communications, customer journey design, audience intelligence, measurement, and responsible AI-enabled workflows. This is a senior individual contributor role with no direct reports and substantial autonomy, enterprise influence, and accountability for outcomes. This is an exciting opportunity for a strategist to join a fast-maturing program, to help shape and define the departments’ shared understanding of their goals, audiences, and customer journeys, all while working closely with the larger Granicus Experience Group team to execute against that strategy.
Operating at a strategic level, this role partners with executive stakeholders to translate mission priorities into scalable engagement models, establishes best practices for cross-agency collaboration, and leads transformation of delivery systems across people, process, policy, and technology. This role influences program strategy, delivery methodologies, and engagement frameworks in partnership with federal leadership, helping shape how programs operate and evolve at scale.
Our growing team of digital thinkers and creators drive excellence through the design, development, and/or delivery of programmatic campaigns and content. Strong candidates will have a proven track record of delivering programmatic digital campaigns for customers, preferably for government (health care a plus), expertise in marketing automation, and be a master of implementing a strategy across multiple channels through email and SMS drip campaigns.
Who We Are:
- Data-driven thinkers, grounding our insights and recommendations for growth in measurable data and context.
- Human-centered design practitioners, understanding best practices, regardless of technology or use case, and always putting people at the center of our solutions.
- Digital content creators, applying best practices to key message development, evaluation of current client content, and identifying optimization opportunities.
- Innovators, leveraging design-thinking and other frameworks to keep our work fresh and help our customers adopt a mindset for change. We drive toward success with a spirit of experimentation and agility.
How We Show Up to Work:
- Demonstrate a polished, professional relationship with colleagues and customers.
- Assume positive intent.
- Be collaborative. Create space for and be open to different expertise and experiences.
- Be dependable and reliable for our customers and our colleagues.
- Be organized and manage your own workload.
- Be proactive. Be willing to jump in, not wait to be told.
- Be willing to try something new, not dependent on documented examples.
- Be empathetic. Consider the human experience, needs and motivations of our customers and our colleagues.
- Be open to feedback. Listen with the same passion with which you want to be heard.
- Be curious. Gather information and knowledge. Consider new ideas and approaches. Consider what you might not know.
Essential Function
Strategic Leadership & Business Planning
- Serve as the principal strategic adviser to executive stakeholders, influencing long-term program direction, operating models, communications governance, and customer experience transformation initiatives.
- Lead a complex and comprehensive multichannel strategic program in the state of California, including complete management of project scope, timeline, and requirements.
- Lead innovation in program delivery, introducing new approaches that improve transparency, auditability, and stakeholder outcomes.
- Establish and institutionalize discovery methodologies, journey mapping frameworks, audience intelligence models, and engagement strategies that become reusable assets across GXG and Granicus.
- Define and evolve enterprise-scale communications, engagement, and customer experience frameworks that establish the standard for Medi-Cal and future state health and human services programs.
- Responsible for all elements of planning, content development, reporting and optimization.
- Translate complex executive goals, policy priorities, audience needs, program constraints, and data into strategic decisions, actionable recommendations, and durable solutions.
- Operate with substantial autonomy as the on-site authority for communications and experience strategy, resolving ambiguity and setting default approaches within the function.
- Guide senior customer and Granicus stakeholders through high-impact decisions, risks, trade-offs, and opportunities using evidence, judgment, and industry expertise.
- Define the approach for multichannel planning, content development, campaign orchestration, reporting, optimization, and continuous improvement across email, SMS, web, and related channels.
- Coordinate multiple project team members to lead projects and programs throughout the project life cycle from discovery to delivery, through ongoing project management and optimization.
- Develop and maintain program and project management artifacts to ensure all projects have appropriate project management artifacts and processes, including custom project plans, schedules, and deliverables for external customers to satisfy quality, time, and budget.
- Analyze program and project roadmaps for conflicting tasks, timeline consolidation, risks, and resource allocation; identify critical path to completion and plans for risk management and mitigation.
- Ensure delivery systems operate effectively at scale, optimizing across scope, cost, risk, and long-term program outcomes.
- Ensure solutions are durable, scalable, and transferable beyond a single team, initiative, or phase of the program.
- Serve as the final functional authority for the quality and strategic integrity of communications and experience deliverables within the assigned program.
- Act as a primary client feedback conduit to the Granicus Experience Group team and maintain proactive approaches to executing client initiatives, anticipating client needs, and keenly guiding decisions based on data and best practices.
- Continuously demonstrate a polished, professional relationship with colleagues and clients by being organized, prepared, and proactive. Have an authentic and polished presence at all times.
- Become an expert on Granicus products and future product development by keeping abreast of new and upcoming enhancements to our platform.
- Occasionally represent the Granicus Experience Group in speaking roles, panel participation, webinars, workshops, and client outreach, as well as attend and participate in industry conferences and workshops throughout the U.S. as needed.
Knowledge/Skills/Abilities
- Expert in government program delivery and stakeholder engagement strategies
- Proven ability to define and scale methodologies across complex agency environments
- Hands‑on experience with project management for communications campaign development, stakeholder engagement activities, and/or digital content creation
- Expertise in seeing delivery as a system. Expert in designing systems-level solutions across people, process, policy, and technology.
- Experience influencing senior state agency stakeholders and shaping program direction
- Understanding of vendor‑led or hybrid delivery models (government + integrators)
- Ability to drive innovation and establish new standards in regulated environments
- Expert with documentation, governance checkpoints, and external oversight
- Expert at managing tradeoffs without undermining team autonomy
- Proven ability to stabilize delivery in complex, high‑visibility programs
- Executive‑level written and verbal communication skills
- Expert ability to communicate effectively with technical and non‑technical audiences
- Use of metrics to improve delivery outcomes, not as punitive reporting
- Comfortable producing delivery inputs for leadership briefings and audits
- Exceptional expertise in digital communications, customer experience, multichannel engagement, journey design, content strategy, audience intelligence, and performance optimization.
- Strong written, verbal, and presentation skills, workshop facilitation skills, and cross-functional leadership skills in a heavy client-facing capacity.
- Proven experience digesting data and deriving insights that lead to actionable recommendations, then applying intuition and experience to complement data.
- Understand and use digital tools, technologies, and trends, then leverage those for client success, including research and discovery efforts.
- Executive presence and advisory skills, including the ability to influence senior stakeholders, navigate sensitive decisions, and build alignment in complex environments.
- Advanced strategic thinking, business judgment, and problem-solving skills, with the autonomy to make high-impact recommendations and decisions within a defined scope.
- Ability to connect communications strategy to program, customer, operational, and business outcomes.
- Ability to be flexible in a changing work environment and to work well under pressure.
- Consistently manage, perform, and scope against simultaneous projects in a fast-paced environment.
- Experience and/or enthusiasm for working with government. Passionate about public service, citizen engagement, and all things digital. Experience with health and human services or social care programs preferred.
- Thrive in a fast-paced environment while demonstrating strong personal initiative and on-time delivery of project tasks and deliverables.
- Maintain awareness and understanding of government and California news, as well as digital communications and industry developments that apply to the position and responsibilities.
- Be hungry and passionate, have a collaborative spirit, and be committed to making a difference with communications and collaboration.
Experience/Credentials:
- 12+ years of consulting or digital strategy, preferably in a digital/social media company serving government or at a government agency.
- 7+ years influencing or leading enterprise-scale or multi-program initiatives
- Demonstrated success shaping delivery methodologies or operating models across large organizations
- Must be located in or around Sacramento, CA to be onsite with the customer daily.
- Experience in government, public sector, or regulated environments is preferred. Health care industry experience a plus
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent relevant professional experience.
Other Job Info
- This role will be performed onsite at the customer offices in Sacramento, California.
- These statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by employees assigned to this job. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of employees assigned to this job.
- This role is typically performed on a computer using Zoom or Teams. Individual will be on camera throughout the day engaging with other employees. The role is typically performed indoors within a home office environment. This role is typically performed while sitting or standing at a desk. The individual will occasionally lift light objects.
Security Requirement:
Responsible for Granicus information security by appropriately preserving the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) of Granicus information assets in accordance with the company's information security program.
