Digital Content Archivist

THE ROLE: M&C Saatchi World Services is seeking a Digital Content Archivist to manage, preserve, and govern enterprise multimedia, creative, and communications assets across a diverse portfolio of federal programs. Working at the intersection of content operations, digital asset management, knowledge management, and communications, you will ensure that critical organizational assets remain accessible, organized, secure, and compliant with archival standards and retention requirements. You will oversee the lifecycle of digital and physical collections, maintain metadata and taxonomy frameworks, and support the long-term preservation of content that enables institutional continuity and strategic reuse. The ideal candidate combines expertise in archival practices, digital asset management, and information governance with exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail. They are comfortable working across creative, communications, technical, and operational teams to establish sustainable archival processes that improve discoverability, accessibility, and content stewardship. This is a hybrid role; however, the ideal candidate will live in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) region.

Key Responsibilities: Manage, organize, catalog, and preserve enterprise multimedia, communications, and creative assets, including videos, photography, graphics, documents, publications, and historical materials. Administer digital asset management (DAM) systems and archival repositories, ensuring metadata accuracy, taxonomy consistency, and content discoverability. Develop and maintain archival structures, collection inventories, finding aids, indexes, and documentation that support efficient asset retrieval and governance. Implement archival standards, retention schedules, preservation policies, and records management practices in accordance with organizational and federal requirements. Oversee asset lifecycle management processes, including ingestion, classification, version control, supersession, archival, and disposition activities. Ensure the long-term accessibility and integrity of archived materials through preservation workflows, file migration strategies, backup procedures, and storage management practices. Conduct archival audits and quality assurance reviews to verify metadata completeness, repository accuracy, and compliance with governance standards. Collaborate with content creators, designers, videographers, communications teams, and stakeholders to ensure proper asset ingestion, tagging, and classification. Support rapid retrieval of archived content for communications initiatives, leadership engagements, stakeholder requests, and mission-critical activities. Develop and maintain metadata standards, taxonomy frameworks, naming conventions, and archival governance processes. Provide training and guidance on archival procedures, DAM system usage, metadata discipline, and content stewardship best practices. Identify opportunities to improve archival workflows, preservation approaches, asset management processes, and organizational knowledge management capabilities. Key Attributes Experience managing archives, digital asset management systems, records repositories, knowledge management platforms, or enterprise content collections. Strong understanding of archival principles, metadata standards, taxonomy development, digital preservation practices, and information governance. Experience organizing and managing large multimedia collections, creative assets, communications materials, or historical records. Experience leveraging AI-assisted development, UX research, accessibility, and digital experience optimization tools to improve platform performance and user outcomes. Curiosity in technology landscape and how AI is changing communications. Knowledge of archival metadata frameworks, digital preservation methodologies, and content lifecycle management processes. Experience maintaining inventories, repositories, finding aids, documentation systems, and governance standards. Strong organizational and cataloging abilities with exceptional attention to detail and accuracy. Experience collaborating with communications, creative, content, technical, and operational teams. Ability to establish and maintain standards for metadata, content classification, retention, and archival governance. Strong analytical, documentation, and problem-solving skills. Excellent communication and stakeholder-management capabilities. Experience supporting federal government, Department of Defense, public affairs, communications, or mission-driven organizations is preferred. Familiarity with accessibility standards, cloud-based repositories, DAM platforms, records management systems, or digital preservation technologies is preferred. Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance, as required by the position. Degree or relevant experience in Human-Computer Interaction, User Experience Design, Psychology, Behavioral Science, Communications, Digital Strategy, Information Architecture, or a related field preferred. Eligibility Requirements U.S. Citizenship: Must be a United States Citizen (required by government contract). Clearance Eligibility: Must be able and willing to obtain a U.S. Government Secret or Top Secret security clearance immediately upon employment. Background Screening: Must be willing to submit to a rigorous federal background investigation, which includes an in-depth review of personal finances, criminal history, employment history, and drug use. The salary range provided reflects the anticipated compensation for this role across our Washington, DC and New York locations. Actual starting salary will be determined based on geographic location, relevant experience, skills, and other job-related factors.

WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT HERE: Work on impactful programs supporting federal and defense-related initiatives. Collaborate with high-performing cross-functional teams across communications, digital and analytics disciplines. Opportunity to shape strategic public engagement initiatives at enterprise scale. Flexible hybrid working environment. Exposure to complex, mission-driven stakeholder engagement challenges. Career development opportunities within a fast-growing global organization. What You Get We offer a competitive salary and a benefits package designed to support your health, family life, financial wellbeing, and growth: 12 weeks’ of full pay for primary caregivers and 6 weeks for secondary caregivers. Choice of three medical plans (HSA at $0 cost; EPO 75% employer funded; PPO 65% employer funded) 70% employer-funded dental and vision coverage Generous paid time off, sick leave, and company holidays, including an office closure between Christmas & New Year's 401(k) with 5% employer match Gym membership reimbursement and/or Wellhub subscription Mental health support through EAP and Self Space services Work from anywhere for up to 2 weeks per year (subject to approval) Social events, happy hours, professional development trainings, etc. ABOUT M+C SAATCHI WORLD SERVICES M+C Saatchi World Services is a specialist division of M+C Saatchi Group, the world’s largest independent communications network. Our specialists work in office hubs across six continents, grounding our global expertise in local nuance. We offer award-winning commercial communications capabilities, which are utilized by global organizations to address the world’s most complex problems across defence, development, diplomacy, homeland and national security, law and order, health, education, and the environment. We work with clients that want to help the hardest-to-reach, hardest-to-influence audiences. This includes a range of Western Government departments, such as DOS and USAID; partner governments, including the U.K. and Australia; and prominent IGOs/NGOs such as the U.N. We are a comms agency that works on behaviour change projects typically focused on issues related to Security, Defence and Stabilization. Whether it’s producing critically acclaimed feature films in Africa, to TV shows in the Middle East, to pop music videos in Asia, we have a record of leveraging creativity to access communities anywhere in the world. #WS