Data Annotation Specialist (Contract)

About Us:

Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias, and break free from algorithms.

In a world where political polarization and media distrust are at an all-time high, Ground News offers people a better way to stay informed and see every side of the story. Our mobile app, web app, and browser extension are home to a community of mindful readers who use our news comparison platform to engage with news beyond their filter bubble.

Unlike most news companies, our values do not align with any specific political ideology. Unlike most tech platforms, we don’t rely on algorithms to keep users on our platform to sell more ads. We are supported by our readers who pay for a subscription to build a more nuanced understanding of the news, the world, and themselves.

Highlights:

• #1 on Product Hunt

• #2 on 2025 Apple Design Awards in the Social Impact category

• 3-time winner of US App of the Day

• Winner of Digital News Innovation Challenge by Facebook

• Winner of Mobile Apps Showdown at CES.

The Opportunity: Data Annotation Specialist (Contract)

As we continue building machine learning systems that power our clustering models, bias detection, and content intelligence capabilities, the quality of our training and evaluation data is essential.

We’re looking for a detail-oriented Data Annotation Specialist to support data annotation and evaluation initiatives that help our ML team improve the accuracy and reliability of ML systems, and ensure that the experiences we deliver to subscribers remain trustworthy, balanced, and high-quality.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in high-precision, methodical work, and takes pride in contributing to meaningful media literacy initiatives. You’ll work remotely as part of a distributed team and support projects that sit at the intersection of media literacy, data, and machine learning.

This is a contract position with a weekly time commitment of approximately 5 hours.

What You’ll Do:

• Article Metadata Validation: Compare extracted metadata (such as publication date, attribution, headline, description, and other article attributes) against source articles using rendered HTML views or screenshots from ingestion pipelines.

• Clustering Evaluation: Assess whether articles belong together based on topic, context, and editorial relevance using defined evaluation frameworks and rubrics.

• Summary Quality Evaluation: Identify inconsistencies and ensure accuracy, completeness, and alignment with source material/extracted data, using structured scoring frameworks.

• Annotate and Label Content Data: Tag, categorize, and review text, images, and documents according to annotation guidelines that support ML model training and evaluation.

• Ensure Annotation Quality and Consistency: Maintain high standards of accuracy and consistency across annotation tasks.

• Follow Structured Annotation Frameworks: Apply detailed task instructions, rubrics, and evaluation criteria with strong attention to nuance.

• Collaborate with a distributed team: Work synchronously and asynchronously with team members to meet project milestones and continuously improve annotation workflows and quality benchmarks.
  

What You’ll Bring:

• Exceptional attention to detail and commitment to producing high-quality, consistent work.

• Excellent reading comprehension and English language fluency, with the ability to evaluate nuanced written content.

• Solid ability to follow structured guidelines, scoring rubrics, and annotation frameworks with precision.

• Comfort analyzing news articles and long-form written material.

• Strong work ethic, responsible use of AI, and ability to manage time effectively in a remote environment.

• Non-partisan approach: Ability to maintain neutrality and objectivity when evaluating news and information content.
  
  

Bonus Points:

• Undergraduate degree or academic background in journalism, communications, English, political science, or a related discipline.

• Prior experience in data annotation, data labeling, content moderation, or research analysis.

• Exposure to machine learning, natural language processing, or AI evaluation workflows.

• Strong interest in media literacy, information integrity, or news analysis.

Why Work at Ground?

Co-founded by a former NASA engineer and Bain consultant, a position with Ground News provides an unparalleled learning experience both personally and professionally. At Ground, we prioritize growth: both for our business and team members. You’ll have the freedom to work remotely and play a key role in the development of Ground News products.

This is an opportunity to work with a growing and mighty team that is committed to building a world where cooperative, civil debate is the norm, media is accountable, and critical thought is the baseline of our information consumption. Ground is based in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, but this role is remote.

Compensation & Benefits:

The hourly rate for this role is $30 (CAD).

What you’ll enjoy at Ground News:

🌍 Remote-first environment: Work from anywhere in Canada, on your own time zone plus enjoy in-person meetups.

🚀 Mission-driven team: Join a group of smart, dedicated people who are building meaningful products with real-world impact.

We are committed to building and fostering an inclusive, accessible environment for everyone. If you have any questions, concerns, or require any accessibility accommodations during our interview process, please contact [email protected] and a member of our team will be happy to support you.