Head of Community

Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR) is the essential neighborhood network. Neighbors, public agencies, and businesses use Nextdoor to connect around local information that matters in more than 350,000 neighborhoods across 11 countries. Nextdoor builds innovative technology to foster local community, share important news, and create neighborhood connections at scale. Download the app and join the neighborhood at nextdoor.com. 

We’re looking for a Head of Community who thrives in the room — not just behind the strategy. The community function has built real organizational momentum, established a clear north star metric in Neighborhood Health, launched AI-powered systems for content research and experiment design, and earned trust from the teams that matter most. 

You will inherit a strong, experienced team, a robust backlog of evidence-backed experiments, AI-powered systems handling much of the analytical and operational work, and documented findings on what actually drives neighborhood health across our 11 global markets. 

This leadership role sits at the intersection of community strategy, cross-functional influence, and AI-enabled operations. If you get energy from live decision-making, persuading skeptics, and making community the function every team wants in the room at the start of a project — not just at launch — this role was built for you.

At Nextdoor, we operate in an AI-first environment and expect every team member to actively use AI tools as part of their workflow. We aren't looking for prompt engineers; we’re looking for people who use tools like Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Glean to challenge their own thinking and take full ownership of AI-assisted outputs.

We also offer a warm and inclusive work environment that embraces a hybrid employment model, blending an in office presence and work from home experience for our valued employees. The hiring team will go over these expectations with you if you are being considered for a role near one of our offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and London. 

Day to day, this role is about presence and persuasion as much as it is about strategy and execution. You will spend the majority of your time embedded in the cross-functional work where community decisions get made — and the rest running experiments, leading your team, and managing the technical and operational infrastructure that supports the platform.

Your responsibilities will include: 

• Be the voice of the community in the rooms where it counts. Show up in product reviews, leadership syncs, and cross-functional meetings with the evidence, context, and relationships needed to make community a factor in decisions before they are made — not after. The goal is to shift from community chasing product teams at launch to product teams proactively asking what the community thinks at the outset
• Turn results into action. Design and execute experiments, analyze outcomes, and translate findings into product recommendations fast enough that teams pull them in. Own the experiment pipeline and the evidence-backed backlog behind it
• Manage and develop a team. Lead Nextdoor’s Community team with genuine investment in their growth, development, and day-to-day work. This is a real leadership role, not a coordination role
• Manage and improve AI-powered community systems. Oversee the AI systems handling content research, experiment design, communications drafting, and weekly community health monitoring. Evaluate output quality, identify gaps, and continuously raise the bar on what these systems produce. You do not need to be technical, but you need to be a rigorous evaluator
• Co-own Trust & Safety and Community Health initiatives. Partner with Neighborhood Operations on the projects involving Leads, Reviewers, and neighbors — including AI-assisted moderation and other internal tools. The community leaders play a large and critical role in Trust & Safety, and this function needs someone who can hold that complexity alongside the broader community strategy
• Continue building the community's organizational standing. Prevent backsliding, deepen the buy-in from teams that are already there, and close the gap with the ones that still work on community-centric projects without engaging the Community team. The goal: working with community is always an accelerant, never a hindrance
• Strengthen and scale the Neighborhood Leads program globally. Oversee the Leads Journey — acquisition, onboarding, training, recognition, and long-term retention — across all 11 markets, with differentiated approaches for new versus mature communities
• Participate in in-person Nextdoor events such as trainings, off-sites, volunteer days, and team building exercises
• Build in-person relationships with team members and contribute to Nextdoor’s company culture

• 10+ years of relevant experience managing or leading community programs at scale, online or offline, with demonstrated success across multiple markets or platforms. Comfort with up to 30% travel
• Cross-functional influence is your primary mode. You get energy from meetings, live decision-making, and persuading skeptics — not just tolerating it. You have a track record of making other teams want you in the room at the start of projects, not just when things go sideways
• Entrepreneurial instincts paired with enterprise fluency. You know how to change things inside a 500+ person organization. You are comfortable with ambiguity, skilled at navigating established processes, and energized by the combination of a well-established platform and a function still proving its indispensability
• Deep, nuanced community experience. You know the craft well enough to push back on generic best practices. You understand that what drives healthy community behavior is often counterintuitive — intrinsic motivation over extrinsic, questions over statements, geographic density over broad reach — and you can protect those nuances while operating at scale across 11 markets
• A real leader, not a reluctant one. You are invested in the development of your direct reports and see people management as central to your job, not a tax on it. You have experience leading geographically distributed teams and developing talent at multiple career stages
• Genuine passion for the local community. You are intrinsically motivated by the mission of strengthening local neighborhoods. Familiarity with and interest in Nextdoor’s core member demographic is a meaningful plus
• AI-fluent and a rigorous evaluator of AI output. You do not need to be technical. You do need to be curious, skeptical, and capable of raising the bar on what AI systems produce. You have experience working with or overseeing AI-assisted workflows, and you understand where AI accelerates the work and where human judgment is non-negotiable

Compensation, benefits, perks, and recognition programs at Nextdoor come together to create our total rewards package. Compensation will vary depending on your relevant skills, experience, and qualifications.

The base salary for this role is expected to range from $175,000 - $270,000 on an annualized basis, or potentially greater in the event that your 'level' of proficiency exceeds the level expected for the role. The salary range will be determined by the candidate’s geographic location.

We expect to award a meaningful equity grant for this role. With quarterly vesting, your first vest date will take place within 3 months of your start date.

When it comes to benefits, we have you covered! Nextdoor employees can choose between a variety of health plans, including a 100% covered employee only plan option, and we also provide a OneMedical membership for concierge care.

At Nextdoor, we empower our employees to build stronger local communities. To create a platform where all feel welcome, we want our workforce to reflect the diversity of the neighbors we serve. We encourage everyone interested in our mission to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or any other trait that unfairly targets a group of people. In accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we always consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

For information about our collection and use of applicants’ personal information, please see Nextdoor's Personnel Privacy Notice, found here.