Help Desk for America is a free assistant any resident can call or text to solve a government problem. We are looking to partner with direct aid organizations on a 90-day pilot starting winter 2026 in New Mexico. This role joins a product lead and a user-experience (UX) researcher. The role runs 25 hrs/week for 90 days, with consideration to extend if the pilot is successful. The role is remote, with working hours that overlap with Mountain Time. Living in New Mexico is a plus. Experience with large language models (LLMs) is also a plus but not required; we train every hire to use them for research and for building software. Help Desk for America is a product of Portfolio. Portfolio Holdings (https://portfolio.sc/) is a special projects studio for democracy. We form small teams that take an idea, test it under live conditions, and, if it works, spin it out as an independent organization.
The role:
Why this role exists: The Content Manager owns whether the assistant's answers are correct and solve the caller's problem. A caller acts on what the assistant says, and a wrong deadline or a missing document can cost a family food aid or health coverage.
What you will do:
Write the New Mexico knowledge base the assistant answers from: eligibility rules, deadlines, required documents, common roadblocks, and office contacts, each with a source and a verification date. Start with SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and Medicaid. Review transcripts as cases close, and grade a sample with the UX researcher to measure whether callers' problems got solved. Trace every wrong or stale answer to its cause (a missing rule, an outdated source, a misread of the caller's situation, or a hand-off to the wrong office) and fix the cause, so the same wrong answer is never given twice. Keep the knowledge base in step with the Partnership Manager's service map, so the office the assistant names is the office that answers.
Required qualifications:
Domain knowledge: has done benefits navigation, 2-1-1 information work (the three-digit local help line), legal aid intake, or research on government services, and knows how eligibility, deadlines, and documents differ by program.
Reading: reads eligibility rules, regulations, and agency notices in the original and states what they require without losing a condition or an exception.
Writing: turns a rule into a plain-language answer a stressed caller can act on, in under a hundred words, with the source and the date attached.
Analysis: reads a conversation transcript and identifies where an answer went wrong and why.
Preferred qualifications:
Has run a review-before-publish process for public-facing information.
Knows New Mexico's benefits programs and the offices that run them.
Work environment. Remote.
