Senior Editorial and Communications Officer

**Description**

The **Pacific Community (SPC)** is the principal scientific and technical organisation in the Pacific region, supporting development since 1947. We are an international development organisation owned and governed by our 27 country and territory members. In pursuit of sustainable development to benefit Pacific people, our organisation works across more than 25 sectors. We are known for our knowledge and innovation in such areas as fisheries science, public health, geoscience, and conservation of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.

The vision of the **Educational Quality and Assessment Programme (EQAP)** is to be ‘The agency for educational quality in the Pacific region’. Its mission is to enhance the quality of education and training for Pacific learners, so they realize the benefits of lifelong learning. EQAP seeks to promote the following core values within the context of SPC’s corporate values:

- a culture of quality;
- a culture of continuous improvement;
- cultural and political sensitivity;
- respect for the autonomy and priorities of the education system in each Pacific Island country and territory (PICTs); and
- assimilation of the expressed needs of countries in its delivery of technical services.

The role – **Senior Editorial and Communications Officer** will provide high quality editorial, writing, and communications support services to EQAP by contributing to the development, editing and coordination of reports, publications and communications outputs. The role will also support publication readiness, apply editorial standards, assist with rapporteuring, and contribute to communications activities under the guidance and direction of the Team Leader, helping ensure that EQAP outputs are clear, accurate, timely and fit for purpose.

The key responsibilities of the role include:

**Editorial Quality and Publications Readiness**

- Provide editorial review, copy‑editing and proofreading for EQAP reports, briefs, web stories, social media posts, and other written products.
- Check drafts for clarity, structure, consistency, accuracy, style and audience appropriateness.
- Identify quality issues, risks or inconsistencies and provide timely, constructive feedback to authors and the Team Leader.
- Support publication workflows from draft through to publication, including liaison with authors, designers, translators and SPC Publishing teams.

**Report Writing and Content Development**

- Draft sections of reports, summaries, briefs and written communications as assigned.
- Revise and rewrite technical content to improve clarity and audience accessibility.
- Work with technical teams to translate complex information into reader‑friendly formats.
- Support MEL and communications inputs into reports and narratives where required.

**Communications Coordination**

- Coordinate day‑to‑day communications activities across EQAP to support timely and consistent delivery of routine communications outputs.
- Assign, schedule and track communications tasks with Communications Assistants to support agreed priorities and deadlines, escalating resourcing or timing risks where required.
- Review and quality‑check communications content (e.g. announcements, web content, briefs, social media) to ensure alignment with approved messaging, editorial standards and SPC guidelines.
- Support the consistent application of EQAP and SPC communications standards, templates and branding across communications products.

**Staff Guidance and Writing Support**

- Provide ad‑hoc technical guidance to EQAP staff on writing, editing and publication matters when requested.
- Respond to questions related to style, formatting and clarity.

**People Management and Mentoring**

- Support a team environment that fosters effective working relationships and high performance.
- Conduct fair, consistent, timely performance planning and review meetings and encourage open communication to discuss performance and encourage training and development opportunities.

For a more detailed account of the key responsibilities, please **refer to the online job description**.

Key selection criteria

**Qualifications**

- A bachelor’s degree in communications, journalism, editing, publishing, English, education, policy, development studies, or a related field, or an equivalent body of knowledge and experience.

**Technical expertise**

- 5 years of experience in editing, copy‑editing, proofreading and writing complex reports and publications, with a strong emphasis on editorial quality, accuracy and consistency.
- Proven ability to bridge the gap between highly technical content and audience readability, including translating complex analytical, policy or technical material into clear, structured and accessible written outputs for diverse audiences.
- Strong track record of improving draft documents through rigorous editorial review, including attention to logic, flow, structure, tone, terminology, referencing and factual accur