Earn Up to $95,000 Working Remotely: CalMatters Is Looking for a Transcription Specialist to Join Its Team

Overview

CalMatters, an award-winning nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom that explains California's public policy and politics and which merged with The Markup in 2024, is hiring a Transcription Specialist for its Digital Democracy project. The job is full-time and remote, open to candidates across the United States, with a preference for those based in California and occasional travel to Sacramento and San Luis Obispo. The salary is USD 75,000 to 95,000 per year depending on experience.

Digital Democracy is an AI-powered platform that captures and organises legislative proceedings in real time into a searchable database, helping journalists, policymakers and the public follow state legislatures. Launched in California, it has expanded to Hawai'i and is growing into Texas, Connecticut and other states. The specialist works with the Transcription Manager to prepare legislative videos and data for the transcription team. Duties include reviewing hearings and identifying bill discussions, preparing video for transcription, cleaning text to improve accuracy, supporting end-to-end transcription, organising metadata and categorising legislative data, maintaining quality assurance, coordinating workflows with the team and helping improve AI-assisted transcription pipelines.

Requirements

Applicants should have experience with legislative processes in any US state, particularly Texas, data tagging and metadata organisation, data cleanup and record management, transcription workflows and style guides, speech-to-text software, copy editing, proofreading and quality assurance, and coordinating or reviewing the work of small teams. Database experience, SQL, familiarity with AI speech-to-text, knowledge of data pipelines and a background in public policy, political journalism or legal studies are preferred.

What you get

Benefits include medical, dental and vision insurance with 95 percent of health premiums paid by the employer for employees and dependents, a 401(k) with employer match, employer-paid life insurance and union representation through the Pacific Media Workers Guild.

How to apply

Applicants submit a current resume and relevant work samples through the online careers portal and answer application questions in place of a cover letter. CalMatters asks that these answers be written without AI or other automated writing tools, and applicants should not contact hiring managers directly.