Content Lead

Pocket FM is the world's largest audio-series platform, where powerful stories travel effortlessly across languages, cultures, and continents. From India and the US to Europe and beyond, we're redefining how stories are created, discovered, and experienced across the globe.

With one of the largest creator ecosystems in entertainment, Pocket FM is home to millions of listeners and an ever-growing catalog of original serialized content. We're building the future of storytelling by bringing together exceptional writers, creators, and creative leaders to develop stories audiences can't stop listening to.

Pocket FM is seeking a Content Lead to join our Japan Content team and lead the strategy, execution, and growth of our Japanese writing function. This role will oversee the development of high-quality serialized audio stories tailored for Japanese audiences while building scalable editorial systems and AI-enabled writing workflows that improve both quality and speed.

As the Content Lead, you'll manage the writing team across multiple series, establish creative standards, and ensure every show delivers compelling storytelling with strong retention through pacing, emotional payoff, and narrative structure. You'll partner closely with cross-functional teams including Production, Product, Marketing, and Creative Operations to ensure scripts are delivered on time and production-ready.

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced creative leader who is passionate about serialized storytelling, team development, and building best-in-class content systems in a fast-paced entertainment company.

• Own the content strategy and editorial vision for Pocket FM's Japanese content slate across genres and serialized formats.

• Help define the roadmap for upcoming content, identifying opportunities to expand genres, storytelling formats, and audience engagement.

• Lead and manage the Japan writing team, providing coaching, mentorship, performance feedback, and career development.

• Establish and maintain high creative standards across all shows, ensuring consistency in storytelling quality and audience experience.

• Build and scale writing playbooks, editorial processes, templates, and best practices to improve creative execution.

• Develop and optimize AI-assisted writing workflows, including prompt strategies and LLM-based tools, to increase writing quality and operational efficiency.

• Oversee story architecture across all active series, ensuring strong season arcs, pacing, character development, cliffhangers, emotional payoffs, and serialized narrative structure.

• Identify storytelling weaknesses such as repetitive plotlines, weak conflict, filler episodes, pacing issues, or character inconsistency, and work with writers to strengthen them.

• Create and maintain comprehensive show documentation, including story bibles, canon logs, arc plans, tone guides, and editorial references.

• Own script delivery across all active Japanese series, ensuring scripts are completed on schedule, production-ready, and aligned with launch timelines.

• Manage writing calendars, review cycles, version control, workload planning, and overall writing capacity.

• Lead regular script reviews, beat reviews, arc reviews, and show health evaluations, providing structured editorial feedback that improves both individual writers and overall content quality.

• Partner cross-functionally with Production, Marketing, Product, and other stakeholders to ensure smooth handoffs from writing through launch.

• Analyze creative performance, audience retention, and content learnings to continuously refine editorial standards and improve future storytelling.

• Professional experience in fiction writing, publishing, screenwriting, audio storytelling, serialized fiction, editorial, or another narrative-driven creative environment.

• Experience leading writers, editors, writing rooms, or creative teams with responsibility for coaching, feedback, and performance management.

• Deep understanding of story structure, pacing, character development, cliffhangers, emotional payoff, and serialized storytelling techniques.

• Experience developing story bibles, editorial playbooks, writing systems, or creative workflows that improve consistency and scalability.

• Strong editorial judgment with the ability to provide thoughtful, actionable creative feedback that elevates story quality.

• Experience managing multiple creative projects and balancing competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.

• Strong understanding of Japanese audience preferences, language quality, cultural nuance, and genre expectations.

• Experience writing or developing content within audio fiction, web fiction, television, publishing, romance, fantasy, thriller, or other serialized genres is highly preferred.

• Comfortable incorporating AI tools and large language models into creative workflows to improve efficiency and quality.

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and organizational skills with the ability to work cross-functionally across creative, production, and business teams.

• Passion for serialized storytelling and building world-class entertainment experiences for Japanese audiences.