San Mateo County Emergency Management Coordinator - and Warning - Unclassified

Position: San Mateo County Emergency Management Coordinator - Alert and Warning - Unclassified (Open)
About the Department

The San Mateo County San Mateo County Emergency Management (SMC EM) is not your typical government agency. We operate more like a startup within the public sector - building innovative programs, forging cross-sector partnerships, and redefining what modern emergency management looks like for a county of 775,000 residents across 20 cities and 18 unincorporated areas.

Our mission is to advance community resilience through a proactive and comprehensive approach to emergency management, involving the whole community in every phase of preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery.

To learn more about SMC EM, visit: https://(Use the "Apply for this Job" box below)./dem

About the Role

This is not a desk job. This is not a new position we are trying to figure out. And this is not a role where you sit behind a screen waiting for the next alert to go out.

For over a year, SMC EM has been deliberately building a countywide Alert and Warning (A&W) program that brings coherence, consistency, and credibility to how San Mateo County communicates with the public before, during, and after emergencies. We have developed training curricula, created frameworks, established partnerships, and advanced the conversation across the Operational Area. Now we need someone to carry that work forward - externally.

The Alert and Warning Coordinator is fundamentally an external-facing role. There are 32 agencies within the San Mateo County Operational Area that hold alerting authority and sending rights. Each has its own protocols, staffing models, and levels of experience with alert and warning systems. Your job is to be the connective tissue-socializing our approach to A&W with operational area partners, building alignment across jurisdictions, and ensuring that when an alert goes out in this county, it is timely, accurate, actionable, and drives protective action.

You will brief city councils, law and fire chiefs with equal confidence. You will sit with an Incident Commander during a fast-moving wildfire and translate urgency into a message that saves lives. You will train authorized users on alerting platforms and hold the line on quality when others want to cut corners. And you will do all of this while representing a department that is changing the culture of emergency management in one of the most complex operational areas in the state.

What This Role Actually Involves

Partnership and Coordination (Primary Focus)

* Serve as the primary liaison to the 32 agencies across the Operational Area on all matters related to alert and warning, building relationships and driving alignment toward consistent A&W practices countywide.

* Brief alert and warning programs, standards, and best practices to diverse audiences-from city councils and boards of supervisors to law and fire chiefs, emergency managers, and community organizations-adapting your message for each.

* Coordinate monthly and recurring touchpoints with Operational Area partners to advance shared A&W goals, identify gaps, and troubleshoot challenges collaboratively.

* Represent SMC EM at stakeholder meetings, advisory committees, work groups, tabling events, and public-facing engagements at all levels of government.

* Facilitate training seminars and hands-on workshops for authorized users across jurisdictions on alerting platforms, protocols, and message crafting.

Alert Crafting and Operational Readiness

* Develop, review, and issue emergency alerts that drive protective action - messages that are clear, accurate, geographically targeted, accessible across languages, and calibrated to the threat. This includes understanding what makes an alert effective, not just how to press "send."

* Maintain fluency across multiple alerting platforms including IPAWS, Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), the Emergency Alert System (EAS), mass notification systems, and reverse 9-1-1.

* Participate in a weekly on-call rotation, maintaining 24-hour readiness and responding to the field or Emergency Operations Center (EOC) during emergencies or disasters.

* Conduct regular testing and evaluation of A&W systems to ensure functionality, reliability, and interoperability across jurisdictions.

* Participate in…