Policy Manager, Data Center Community Engagement & Strategic Initiatives

Meta•Washington, DC

17d•$190,000 - $257,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Meta Platforms, Inc. designs, builds, and operates some of the most innovative and efficient data centers in the world. As Meta's infrastructure footprint scales to meet the demands of AI, the company's ability to build — quickly, durably, and with community support — has become one of its most consequential strategic dependencies. How Meta shows up in the communities where it operates is not a downstream communications exercise; it is central to whether Meta can build at all. Meta is seeking a highly experienced strategic leader to serve as a close partner to the Director of Community Engagement, supporting both the Community Engagement Team and a portfolio of company-level strategic initiatives in partnership with senior leadership. This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who thinks several steps ahead, operates with significant independence, and earns standing with internal executives and external stakeholders alike. The Community Engagement Team is organized around Regional Leads and Community Engagement Managers who carry day-to-day relationships in Meta's data center markets. This role sits alongside that structure rather than within it — working horizontally across regions to bring pattern recognition, strategic framing, and enterprise perspective to the Director and to the Regional Leads themselves. The person in this role will be trusted to carry the Community Engagement Team's point of view into rooms where the Director cannot be, to help shape the team's strategic agenda rather than simply execute against it, and to translate ambiguous, high-stakes company priorities into engagement strategy that holds up across dozens of markets and multiple years. They will spend as much time upstream — framing problems, testing assumptions, pressure-testing thinking — as they do downstream driving execution.

Requirements

11+ years of relevant experience in public affairs, government relations, communications, community engagement, economic development, political strategy, or senior advisory roles
Bachelor's degree in public policy, communications, public affairs, political science, business, or equivalent practical experience
Experience serving as a strategic partner or principal advisor to a senior executive, elected official, or organizational leader, including experience representing that leader's position in their absence
Experience helping shape strategy at portfolio or enterprise scale, not solely executing programs within a defined strategy
Experience operating at the intersection of policy and communications, with proven ability to develop and drive strategy in both domains
Experience working effectively with regionally distributed teams, including influencing and supporting colleagues who do not report to you
Experience influencing senior executives and driving decisions without direct authority across 5+ functions
Experience leading in ambiguous, high-consequence situations where precedent does not exist and the path must be defined
Experience with state and local policy, legislative, regulatory, and permitting processes
Experience handling highly confidential information and navigating politically sensitive environments with discretion
Demonstrated excellence in executive-level written communication — memos, briefings, and narrative documents that drive decisions

Nice To Haves

Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to optimize/redesign workflows and drive measurable impact (e.g., efficiency gains, quality improvements)
Experience adhering to and implementing responsible, ethical AI practices (e.g., risk assessment, bias mitigation, quality and accuracy reviews)
Demonstrated ongoing AI skill development (e.g., prompt/context engineering, agent orchestration) and staying current with emerging AI technologies
Experience at a technology, energy, or infrastructure company navigating large-scale siting, expansion, or community relations at national scale
Data center, energy generation, transmission, or large-scale infrastructure development experience
Senior background in state or federal government, a governor's office, utility regulation, or statewide economic development
Fluency in energy procurement, grid reliability, interconnection, and sustainability narratives as they relate to AI-era data center growth
Established senior relationships with elected officials, utility leadership, or economic development organizations across multiple data center markets
Experience building an operating function or capability from an early or undefined state
Master of Public Administration, Master of Business Administration, Master of Public Policy, or Juris Doctor

Responsibilities

Serve as a thought partner to the Director of Community Engagement, helping shape the team's strategic direction, priorities, and multi-year agenda in close collaboration with the Director
Partner with senior company leadership on strategic initiatives to help ensure community engagement considerations are reflected in Meta's highest-priority infrastructure and policy efforts, and to help translate enterprise-level priorities into actionable engagement strategy
Represent the Community Engagement Team in cross-functional forums, executive reviews, and external engagements — carrying the team's agreed position, exercising sound independent judgment, and knowing when to bring a question back to the Director
Help frame the decisions leadership needs to make: surface the tradeoffs, name the unstated assumptions, and bring clear recommendations rather than open-ended options
Develop and deliver executive-level briefings, decision memos, and narrative materials for senior leadership on stakeholder dynamics, political risk, and community strategy
Help develop and steward the strategy for how Meta engages communities across its national data center portfolio — defining the standards that govern engagement quality, the criteria for where Meta concentrates engagement capacity, and the thresholds that trigger escalated leadership attention.
Design and maintain the operating model, playbooks, and decision frameworks that allow community engagement to scale with Meta's infrastructure growth without diluting quality or consistency
Help shape the enterprise narrative architecture for data centers and community impact, in partnership with communications and public policy, and drive consistency across markets, functions, and spokespeople
Take point on some of the team's most sensitive, ambiguous, or highest-consequence market situations — the ones without precedent or playbook — in close coordination with the Director
Help develop and maintain the team's view of emerging policy, regulatory, reputational, and political risk tied to data center siting, permitting, energy procurement, and operations, and drive the response in partnership with leadership
Build the early-warning capability that tells leadership which markets are turning before they turn, and what leverage Meta actually has
Exercise sound judgment on when to escalate, when to absorb a problem within the team, and when to recommend a change of course
Partner closely with Regional Leads to connect market-level realities to enterprise strategy — synthesizing what's happening across their regions into a portfolio-level view, and helping translate company priorities into regional engagement approaches that Regional Leads own and drive
Serve as a strategic resource to Regional Leads and Community Engagement Managers on complex, precedent-setting, or politically sensitive situations, bringing frameworks and cross-market pattern recognition without displacing regional ownership of those relationships
Drive alignment across infrastructure, site selection, real estate, energy, sustainability, communications, public policy, and legal — without direct authority — on sequencing, messaging, and engagement posture
Mentor and help raise the bar across the broader Community Engagement Team, modeling strategic rigor, strong written communication, and sound stakeholder judgment.
Lead cross-functional strategic initiatives spanning community engagement and enterprise infrastructure priorities as needed.
Travel domestically as needed (up to 50%)