Public Programs Manager Jobs in Durham, NC (NOW HIRING)

Public Relations Manager

Reports To: Vice President of Corporate Marketing

Location: Raleigh, NC

Couchbase, the operational data platform for AI, empowers businesses to succeed by bringing data to life in new ways. Major market-leading companies rely on Couchbase for mission-critical operational, analytical, mobile and AI workloads. Built to replace legacy infrastructure and fragmented data services, Couchbase empowers enterprises with a unified platform architected for performance, flexibility and global scale.

With Couchbase, organizations bring their data to life, launching gamechanging customer experiences, exploring the limitless potential of AI, and seamlessly extending applications from the cloud to the edge and beyond. Couchbase's AIready technology and enterprise partnership model eliminate complexity and reduce total cost of ownership, enabling teams to stay agile, innovative and secure.

At Couchbase, you'll work in a high-growth environment where your contributions will directly impact the company's success in a dynamic, fast-growing region. If you are a creative, resourceful, and passionate marketer, we want you to join our team as we shape the future of enterprise data platforms.

Position Overview

We are seeking a dynamic, strategic, and proactive Public Relations Manager to improve awareness and drive engagement with key business and technical media. In this role, you will partner internally with key stakeholders, and externally with our global Public Relations agencies to execute our communication plans, media relations, and protect our market reputation. You will report directly to the Vice President of Corporate Marketing and collaborate closely with internal marketing, product management, senior leaders, and legal teams.

What You Will Do

Media Monitoring, Competitive Intelligence, and Rapid Response:

• Track media coverage daily, use AI to analyze coverage, gather insights, and identify opportunities to improve our media strategy.
• Create and deliver quarterly PR impact reports.
• Flag opportunities for newsjacking, route commentary to the appropriate spokesperson, and drive the approvals of the response within a tight timeframe required for standing briefs.
• Act as the early warning system of competitive activity through daily monitoring of competitors such as Oracle, Databricks, Snowflake, MongoDB, and vector database companies.
• Cultivate and maintain active relationships with key business, trade, and mainstream tech journalists.

Internal Content Pipeline Coordination:

• Actively manage the creation, internal review, and approval process for critical content assets.
• Work with the broader Marketing team to convert primary assets (customer case studies, benchmark reports) into press releases, media pitches, sales one-pagers, social campaigns, executive slides, and blog summaries, ensuring assets are cleared for external use and meet the needs of the sales and web teams.

Spokesperson Management and Preparation:

• Act as the internal advocate to secure time blocks for executive external engagements.
• Own the pre-briefing process, ensuring executives walk into every media interview and conference session with the right talking points mapped to the correct strategic narrative pillar.

Partner Announcement Gatekeeping:

• Serve as the internal checkpoint for all partner and co-marketing announcements, ensuring they align with a credibility-first approach (e.g., requiring a joint customer).
• Manage stakeholders and internal teams to prevent premature publishing of blog posts and web pages that would undermine the PR team's intent to pitch news as exclusive.

Thought Leadership Program Management:

• Coordinate with the agency on draft thought leadership articles, manage review cycles, and maintain the posting schedule, ensuring ghostwritten content is delivered to completion.
• Drive the editing and approval process for high-quality press releases, briefing documents, media kits, executive speeches, and thought leadership articles.

Measurement and Reporting:

• Own the bi-weekly reporting cadence for the measurement framework (share of voice tracking, message pull through, narrative pillar alignment audits, AI Overview monitoring, and CRM source attribution).
• Run, interpret, and present reporting to leadership, flagging early when metrics drift from targets to enable course correction.

Qualifications

Required

• 5-7 years of experience in corporate communications, public relations, or a closely related discipline, including time spent supporting senior executives.
• Bachelor's degree in Communications, Public Relations, Journalism, or a related field.
• Direct experience in B2B technology, enterprise software, data infrastructure, databases, cloud, or AI/ML categories.
• Demonstrated track record managing high-volume editorial pipelines and shepherding content from draft to external publication across multiple stakeholders.
• Proven experience preparing executives for  press interviews and conference appearances, including developing message frameworks and talking points.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to operate under pressure, including comfort with same-day and four-hour rapid response cycles.
• Experience managing or partnering with external PR, communications, or thought leadership agencies.
• Sharp editorial judgment, with excellent writing, editing, and proofreading skills across a range of formats (press releases, bylines, social, internal briefs).
• Strong cross-functional stakeholder management, especially across PR, product marketing, sales, and legal teams.

Preferred

• Familiarity with the competitive landscape across Oracle, Databricks, Snowflake, MongoDB, and emerging vector database and AI infrastructure vendors.
• Hands-on experience with communications measurement tools and frameworks, including share of voice, narrative alignment audits, AI Overview / generative search monitoring, and CRM source attribution.
• Experience supporting a company through periods of significant change, such as leadership transitions, rebrands, repositioning, or M&A.

Key Competencies

• Understanding of both generative AI and agentic AI. Familiarity using AI tools such as Claude or Gemini.
• Maintain a quality control mindset by ensuring accuracy, consistency, and on-brand execution.
• Remain calm under pressure to triage competing priorities and make decisions quickly.
• Influence without authority to effectively move senior stakeholders toward shared goals.
• Maintain a strategic narrative orientation to ensure every piece of content aligns with core pillars.