Editorial Director

Who are we

Cohere is the leading security-first enterprise AI company. We build cutting-edge foundation AI models and end-to-end products that are designed to solve real-world business problems.

Were training and deploying frontier models for enterprises who are building AI systems. We believe that our work is instrumental to the widespread adoption of AI and we are looking for folks that want to be part of that.

We obsess over what we build. Each one of us is responsible for contributing to increasing the capabilities of our models and the value they drive for our customers. Cohere is a team of researchers engineers designers and more who are all passionate about their craft.

We are a global technology company co-headquartered in Toronto and San Francisco with key offices in London New York City Montreal Seoul Germany and Paris. Join us!

Were hiring an Editorial Director to run Coheres editorial function. Thats the part of the company responsible for everything we publish under our own name in long form with our own voice.

This isnt a green-field role. Youll inherit an established function with senior people already in seat and meaningful work already going out the door. Your job is to take whats in motion raise the standard push the ambition and give the function a sharper editorial center of gravity.

This is not a content marketing role. We dont need someone to scale a case-study library or run a blog calendar tuned to SEO. We need someone who can build a real editorial property. The kind of work people read on a Saturday morning because they want to not because they were retargeted into it. Think Stripe Press. The early years of Airbnbs magazine. Mailchimps Courier. MIT Technology Review at its best. A24s editorial output. That register.

Youll own Coheres editorial vision our publishing calendar our writers (staff and freelance) and our long-form output across writing film photography podcasts and eventually books. Youll be a peer to our Head of Brand Marketing and our Design Director. The three of you reporting to the VP of Brand set the creative direction of the company.

Youre our head of storytelling externally and internally. Externally you build the editorial property and the body of work we publish under our name. Internally you help the company tell its own story to itself so the people making the work can feel what theyre a part of and why it matters.

The role sits between art and science. The art is editorial taste: knowing what story is worth telling who should tell it and what register it lives in. The science is publishing discipline: running a real calendar shipping on cadence commissioning and editing at volume without losing the standard and knowing how a piece actually finds its audience. We need both. People who can do one but not the other will struggle here.

Youre an editor in the old sense of the word. And the new sense too. The old-school part: you can read a draft and tell the writer what its actually about including the parts they hadnt realized yet. You commission well. You have a stable of writers photographers and filmmakers you trust and they trust you back. You can talk about a piece of writing at the sentence level and at the strategic level in the same conversation.

The new-school part: you think in formats not just words. A story might want to be a 4000-word essay a short film a photo series a newsletter a podcast a thread. You know which form a story belongs in and you know how a single idea can travel across surfaces without losing itself in translation. You dont own social (the Social Lead does) but you watch it closely you understand how it shapes contemporary publishing and you know that what shows up there is often the public face of the editorial slate.

Above all youre an integrator. You can look at a blog a newsletter a film series a podcast and a feed and see whether they read as one publisher or five. Getting them to read as one is part of the job.

You also run things. Youve shipped on deadline. Youve held a calendar across multiple contributors. Youve managed budgets. You know what it takes to keep a publishing operation moving without letting the standard slip. The romance of editorial work is real but you dont confuse it with disorganization.

Youre culturally fluent across more than tech. You read widely: fiction criticism longform journalism design and architecture writing fashion music food the internet. You have opinions about whats good and why. You know the difference between a piece thats informative and a piece thats alive and you reach for the second one whenever you can.

What you do need is the ability to operate inside a fast-moving company with complex subject matter without losing the editorial standard that made you good in the first place.

• Define what Cohere publishes why and to what standard. Be the person every piece of long-form work gets held against before it ships.

• Develop a clear editorial sensibility: what subjects we engage with what we wont do and how all of that maps to Coheres broader brand strategy without flattening into it.

• Be the editorial standard-bearer internally. People should know what we wouldnt publish that means when you say it.

• Own how Cohere sounds in everything we publish. Voice is the most distinctive thing about a publisher and its yours to set and defend.

• The brand voice principles (the strategic framework the tone-of-voice doc the naming conventions) live with our Head of Brand Marketing. The execution of voice in actual published work sentence by sentence piece by piece lives with you.

• Be the person who can read any piece of writing under our name say whether it sounds like us and articulate why it does or doesnt.

• Build and run Coheres publishing calendar across all long-form channels. Annual themes quarterly slates weekly cadence. Hold it.

• Commission writers photographers filmmakers and producers. Brief edit ship.

• Run editorial budgets contracts rights and freelance operations with real discipline.

• Develop measurement frameworks that respect the form: depth of engagement returning readers cultural pickup citations. Not vanity metrics that mistake reach for resonance.

• Lead the creation of Coheres most ambitious editorial work: essays features profiles films photo essays podcasts and when ready books or print.

• Find the stories worth telling that nobody else is telling well. Sometimes thats about AI. Sometimes its about science work language art history or the future. The connection to Cohere should be felt not explained.

• Mix in original commentary criticism and reporting alongside more conventional brand storytelling. We want a point of view not a brochure.

• Take ownership of Coheres existing owned-media surfaces (site newsletter content channels) and decide what to evolve what to retire and what to launch next. Podcast print eventually a publication or imprint if the work earns the right.

• Make our blog and other brand surfaces feel like they come from the same publisher. Bring the streams together: long-form essays customer stories product writing films photo work the newsletter. Different forms shared sensibility one body of work.

• Cultivate a real readership. Subscribers not impressions. People who open the email.

• Be Coheres head of marketing storytelling internally as well as externally. The same narrative discipline that makes our published work Cohere should make our internal communication Cohere too.

• Help leadership translate marketing strategy into story. All-hands kickoffs strategy memos internal updates: these are marketing storytelling artifacts and they deserve the same editorial attention as anything we publish externally.

• Make the company vision accessible to the people making the work. The engineer shipping a feature the designer making a launch asset the AE walking into a sales meeting: they should all be able to articulate what Cohere is building and why in language that connects what theyre doing to the larger story. Your job is to give them that language.

• Partner with the People team on employer brand and onboarding narrative so what someone learns about who Cohere is when they join matches what they hear after they start.

• Develop and grow a roster of staff editors and writers plus a freelance bench of writers photographers illustrators and filmmakers wed be lucky to publish.

• Be the kind of editor great contributors actively want to work with because the editing makes their work better and the platform takes their work seriously.

• Partner closely with our Head of Brand Marketing who owns brand strategy narrative verbal identity framework and campaigns. Your editorial slate and their briefs should be moving in the same direction. Sometimes their work is the runway for yours; sometimes yours is the runway for theirs.

• Partner closely with our Design Director who owns visual identity and design execution. Editorial work without serious design is a magazine nobody wants to read. Youll work together on the art direction of every major piece.

• Partner with our Social Lead who owns Coheres organic social channels. You dont own social but a lot of what shows up there is the public face of the editorial slate so this is a close working relationship. The editorial sensibility and the social voice should feel like theyre coming from the same publisher not two different companies.

• Coordinate with Product Marketing and Comms on launches and announcements. Your editorial calendar should make these moments land harder without becoming a calendar of them.

• Inherit and develop the existing editorial team: a senior content manager and a staff writer already in seat both producing meaningful work.

• Manage external partners: freelance contributors photo and film producers podcast production print partners.

• Set the standard for the team. Read everything before it ships at least at the early stage. Build an editorial culture where high standards feel motivating not punitive.

We measure editorial work by depth and by reach. Reader growth matters. Stories reaching more people each quarter is how editorial lifts the overall brand. Well track:

• Quality of work shipped assessed against an explicit editorial standard not a vibe.

• Adherence to the publishing calendar: cadence on-time delivery budget.

• Readership growth: net subscribers and readers added each quarter story-level reach organic discovery syndication into places wed want to be syndicated. Is the audience actually growing

• Audience depth: returning readers podcast retention time-on-page share-through rates. Are readers coming back not just arriving

• Cultural pickup: citations inclusions in best-of lists awards syndication conversations the work seeds.

• Earned media on original editorial work. Coverage of pieces as journalism not as marketing.

• Contributor satisfaction. Are great writers photographers and filmmakers actively pitching us

• Internal signal: do people across Cohere feel connected to what were building and able to articulate the story themselves Is the work building our reputation internally and externally as a company that thinks and writes seriously about its world

The standard we wont apologize for: would the best version of this work hold up in a magazine you actually read If not it doesnt ship.

• 15 years in editorial leadership roles with a clear track record of shipping ambitious long-form work at a high standard.

• A portfolio (written filmed recorded edited or commissioned) you can walk us through with conviction.

• Real editors chops. You can edit a draft at the sentence and structural levels and you can articulate what youre doing and why.

• A demonstrated ability to run a publishing operation: calendar budget contributor pipeline rights production. The unsexy part of the job is non-negotiable.

• Cultural fluency across multiple worlds (journalism design fashion music art the internet) and a track record of bringing that fluency into the work.

• A working network of writers photographers filmmakers and producers youd want to bring with you.

• Experience leading editorial teams and managing external creative partners.

• The ability to operate inside a fast-moving company with complex subject matter. And the curiosity to actually engage with the subject matter not just package it.

Were deliberately broad here. Strong candidates might come from:

• Editorial leadership at magazines newspapers or digital publications (The Atlantic Wired The New Yorker MIT Technology Review Bloomberg FastCo The Verge n1 The Drift Highsnobiety Monocle Aperture Wallpaper).

• In-house editorial leadership at culture-forward brands or platforms (Stripe Press the Airbnb magazine era Mailchimps Courier Shopifys editorial work Figmas Config publication Substack-native publications).

• Book publishing or imprint leadership.

• Documentary podcast or audio editorial leadership (Pushkin Pineapple Street Serial Productions 99% Invisible).

• Independent or founder-led publications with real cultural authority.

Pure B2B content marketing experience is not what were after. We want the editorial sensibility that gets you invited to publish in those places.

• Direct experience writing or commissioning work about technology science or AI for a general audience.

• A point of view on how publishing is changing in the age of generative AI without it being a defensive one.

• Experience launching a publication imprint or owned-media property from scratch.

If some of the above doesnt line up perfectly with your experience we still encourage you to apply!

We value and celebrate diversity and strive to create an inclusive work environment for all. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and are committed to providing equal opportunities. Should you require any accommodations during the recruitment process please submit an Accommodations Request Form and we will work together to meet your needs.

We may use AI-enabled tools to screen and assess applicants against the criteria for this position. This helps our recruiters identify potentially qualified candidates but it doesnt limit the applications our recruiters may review or consider.

Full-Time Employees at Cohere Enjoy These Perks:

• An open and inclusive culture and work environment

• Work closely with a team on the cutting edge of AI research

• A weekly lunch stipend of $75/75 or equivalent in your local currency for lunch.

• Full health and dental benefits including a separate budget for mental health.

• RRSP matching 401K Pension Scheme.

• 100% Parental Leave top-up for up to 6 months for either parent.

• Annual enrichment benefits:

  • Arts & culture fitness/wellness quality time and a workspace improvement credit.

  • Education & learning stipend for conferences courses and coaching.

• Remote-flexible offices in Toronto New York San Francisco London and Paris as well as a co-working stipend

• 6 weeks of paid vacation (30 working days!)

• Budget for traveling to other offices if you are remote plus an annual company offsite.

  
  

How and Where We Work:

• Cohere is remote-friendly. We have offices in Toronto San Francisco New York City London Paris Montreal and more coming soon.

• For those in the office: a daily lunch program plenty of snacks and regular community and social events.

• For those not near an office: a co-working benefit so you can work alongside others in your city.

• Everyone receives a $500 home office stipend to set up your workspace properly.

Required Experience:

Director