Global Social Media Manager

Description Arcadis is the world's leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets. We are more than 34,000 people, in over 30 countries, dedicated to improving quality of life. Everyone has an important role to play. With the power of many curious minds, together we can solve the world’s most complex challenges and deliver more impact together. Role description: The Global Social Media Manager plays a pivotal role in defining and leading Arcadis’ global organic social media strategy, ensuring social media is a high-performing channel within our broader brand, marketing and growth agenda. This role requires a strategic, commercially minded leader who can operate with a high degree of autonomy, bring clarity in a complex global environment, and translate enterprise priorities into consistent operational delivery across the business. The successful candidate will play a strategic role in shaping how social media drives brand positioning, omnichannel engagement, and demand generation, while protecting and enhancing Arcadis’ reputation across global markets. They will be expected to build strong relationships with senior stakeholders, influence decisions at leadership level, and ensure social activity is aligned with wider business objectives, brand standards, and growth ambitions. This role will lead the development of global social strategy, governance, channel excellence and marketing programme integration, while also developing the talent, capabilities and ways of working required to deliver the strategy at scale. This role works closely with the Digital Marketing Director and offshore social media team, while partnering with the brand and communications team, employer brand, content creators, digital marketing colleagues, and global and regional stakeholders across the business. Role accountabilities: Individual accountabilities • Define and lead Arcadis’ global social media strategy, aligned with broader brand, marketing, communications and business priorities • Translate strategic priorities into clear, scalable and consistent operational delivery across regions, channels and teams • Operate with a high degree of autonomy, using sound judgement to prioritise, make decisions and drive outcomes in a complex matrix organisation • Build credibility with and effectively manage senior stakeholders, providing strategic counsel, challenge and clear recommendations • Develop and strengthen the talent, team structure and capability needed to deliver a best-in-class global social media function Social Media Strategy and Leadership • Develop and lead a global social media strategy that aligns with Arcadis’ wider sales and marketing engine, brand and business objectives • Define the role of social media within Arcadis’ omnichannel marketing ecosystem, ensuring integration with content, brand, and demand generation activity • Translate strategic direction into clear plans, priorities, governance and measurable deliverables across the business • Drive a growth-focused approach to increase Arcadis’ digital footprint, strengthen audience engagement and enable business growth • Lead social strategy for global marketing programmes, key moments, major events, thought leadership and executive visibility • Develop and evolve social media toolkits, frameworks and enablement materials for leaders, brand ambassadors and sales teams across the business • Identify opportunities to strengthen Arcadis’ market presence through social selling, influencer approaches, content amplification and employee advocacy. • Channel Management • • Develop channel-specific strategies, operating models, guidelines and best practices to ensure consistency and high performance across all social media platforms. • • Lead end-to-end planning, implementation, optimisation and reporting across global organic social activity. • • Oversee the management of Arcadis’ global social media channels, including LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and other relevant platforms. • • Ensure content calendars, publishing workflows and marketing programme activity are coordinated, aligned and executed to a high standard. • • Stay ahead of social media trends, emerging platforms, audience behaviours and digital innovation to keep Arcadis at the forefront of best practice. • • Identify opportunities for better integration between social platforms, systems and wider marketing technology. • • Act as the primary liaison with external social media platform partners, including LinkedIn and Oktopost, to maximise platform capabilities and resolve issues effectively. Brand, Reputation and Risk Management • Proactively monitor and manage reputational risk across Arcadis’ global social media channels. • Ensure social content and engagement activity are aligned with Arcadis’ brand positioning, tone of voice, values and risk standards. • Develop and maintain governance, policies and escalation protocols to support compliant, brand-safe and responsive social media delivery. • Provide clear guidance and training on social media policy, best practice and risk mitigation across the organisation. • Support crisis and issues management on social channels, working with relevant stakeholders to ensure timely and appropriate responses. Performance and Insight • Define and monitor KPIs across growth, engagement, reach, share of voice, audience quality and contribution to broader sales and marketing outcomes • Use analytics and insight to evaluate performance, optimise activity and inform future strategy. • Produce clear, data-driven reporting and communicate results, trends and recommendations to senior stakeholders. • Ensure performance measurement supports not only channel effectiveness, but also wider brand and demand generation objectives. Stakeholder and Team Leadership • Build strong, trusted relationships with senior stakeholders across global, regional and business area teams. • Act as a strategic advisor on social media, bringing insight, confidence and challenge where appropriate. • Partner with global discipline leads and regional counterparts to align priorities and ensure effective execution through communities of practice. • Serve as a key point of coordination and leadership within the social media team, ensuring clarity of roles, priorities and delivery standards. • Mentor and develop team members, strengthening capability across, channel management, content, analytics and governance. • Support recruitment, onboarding and team development to build the capability needed to deliver the social strategy over the long term. Key shared accountabilities • Protect and enhance Arcadis’ external profile by proactively identifying and managing reputational risk across social channels, partnering closely with the External Communications team. • Partner closely with the Global Digital Marketing Director to establish social media as a strategic driver of Arcadis’ omnichannel engagement approach, advancing brand positioning, deepening audience engagement, and contributing to demand generation. • Lead the evolution of social governance, channel strategy, performance frameworks and team capability to enable growth, working closely with the Global Digital Marketing Director and partnering with the Marketing Operations team. Qualifications & Experience: • Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Communications or a related discipline • 7+ years’ experience in digital marketing, with significant experience in social media strategy and management • Proven experience developing and leading social media strategy for a complex, global or matrixed organisation. • Strong track record of translating strategy into consistent operational delivery across multiple teams, stakeholders and markets • Experience supporting brand positioning, a