Communications Writer

Date Posted: 04/04/2025
Req ID: 42393
Faculty/Division: Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
Department: APSC Admin. Units
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00032465

Description:

About us:

U of T Engineering is Canada’s #1 engineering school and among the world’s best. Our diverse community includes more than 5,200 undergraduates, 2,600 graduate students, 340 staff, 270 faculty and over 50,000 alumni. Through innovations in engineering education and research, we prepare the next generation of global engineering leaders to address the world’s most pressing challenges. The Faculty’s Engineering Strategic Communications team is a dynamic group of award-winning communications professionals who are driven to find fresh, authentic and relevant ways to share the stories of U of T Engineering students, staff, faculty and alumni. We embrace a diversity of perspectives in our design and execution of integrated communications initiatives that advance U of T Engineering's strategic priorities, strengthen our relationships with key stakeholders, and expand our reach and engage new audiences.

Your opportunity:

As the communications writer, you are thrilled by finding a unique story and telling it in a way that excites and inspires your audience. You take a holistic approach to storytelling, considering the best use of multimedia and channels that enable you to reach your audiences most effectively. An outstanding writer, skilled interviewer and strategic thinker, you excel at finding fresh news hooks and fascinating story angles that illustrate impact and advance strategic goals. You are excited by scientific and technical topics — you're energized by finding an accessible way to explain how colloidal quantum dots work, how engineered hydrogels could help reverse blindness, or how students are designing new artificial intelligence algorithms for a self-driving car. You seek out diverse voices to highlight different experiences that uphold our commitment to equity and inclusion. Outside of long-form writing prowess, you also bring the skills to write advertising and marketing copy that will help catch the attention of our various audience members. And are adept at navigating multiple projects on competing deadlines and are keen to contribute your communications experience and expertise to lead the design of communications campaigns underpinned by excellent content. You thrive as a key contributor and producer on a highly collaborative team, and are a trusted advisor to your colleagues and peers, helping them find creative and effective ways to achieve their own goals.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Writing news and feature stories; coordinating the preparation of images and copy for story generation.
• Developing advertising and marketing copy for a variety of channels including print, social, digital and web.
• Conducting interviews with leaders, faculty, staff and students for external publication.
• Writing and editing copy and content to advance communications objectives.
• Researching and recommending story ideas that advance priorities and initiatives.
• Implementing plans across a broad range of marketing/communicationchannels.
• Liaising with departmental staff to support effective content/story development.
• Advising contacts on the development of effective marketing campaigns.

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in communications, journalism, professional writing or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Minimum four years of recent and relevant communications, journalism, media and/or marketing-related activities, or equivalent, with a focus on editorial story development, advertising or marketing copy writing.
• Demonstrated experience contributing to design and execution of strategic communications campaigns.
• Demonstrated experience producing content for distribution across multiple platforms and channels, including social media, web and digital.
• Outstanding writing and copy editing skills.
• Demonstrable knowledge of best practices in writing for the web and content presentation online.
• Proven knowledge of the Canadian Press style.
• Highly developed organizational skills, with the ability to manage many projects simultaneously; must be able to deliver projects on-time.
• Strong interpersonal and teamwork skills with the ability to also work independently and build professional relationships.
• Demonstrated skills to utilize professionalism and sound judgment under pressure, while using high degree of accuracy, independence, initiative, judgement and discretion.
• Strong oral and written communication skills and ability to communicate complex topics to a wide range of audiences.
• Demonstratedcommitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and the promotion of a respectful and collegial learning and working environment.

Assets (Nonessential):

• Experience creating content in for-profit sectors.
• Experience developing engaging content for digital media platforms.
• Interest and experience writing about scientific and technical subjects.
• Familiarity with online content management systems, including WordPress.

To be successful in this role you will be:

• Articulate
• Decisive
• Goal oriented
• Intuitive
• Persuasive

Closing Date: 04/14/2025, 11:59PM ET
Employee Group: USW 
Appointment Type: Budget - Continuing 
Schedule: Full-Time
Pay Scale Group & Hiring Zone:  
USW Pay Band 11 -- $75,223. with an annual step progression to a maximum of $96,196. Pay scale and job class assignment is subject to determination pursuant to the Job Evaluation/Pay Equity Maintenance Protocol. 
Job Category: Communication/Media/Public Relations

Lived Experience Statement
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.