Content and Community Lead, Roundabout

We’re a nonprofit product studio that’s reimagining social media. Join us in building digital public spaces that connect people, embrace pluralism, and build community.

We are researchers, engineers, designers, and community leaders. We want more healthy, flourishing spaces on the internet. We have two main strategies to achieve this: helping local communities across America create more flourishing digital spaces and developing prototypes for digital conversation with public service media organizations .

We work by partnering and co-designing with community stewards (moderators, administrators) and public institutions. We’re in this to serve, remove obstacles to power, and make life significantly better for all people, especially folks from underestimated communities. We think this work is essential for democracy.

About Roundabout

Roundabout is a new way for local communities to connect online. We’re building useful, positive, productive, hyperlocal communities stewarded by humans, not robots. We’re up and running in five communities around the country and have strong demand for hundreds more.

New_ Public is the organizational home for Roundabout: a public-spirited nonprofit that listens to communities and brings rockstar-level expertise to bear on our toughest social media and information ecosystem problems. We're proving that a better model for local digital community is possible.

About the role

We are seeking a Content & Community Lead to join our Roundabout team! In this senior role on the Community team, you will be the first dedicated owner of content and audience strategy across Roundabout. Your work will be fast-moving in an entrepreneurial setting: form hypotheses, shepherd experiments, learn, iterate. You'll build content strategy and operations as an integral part of Launchpad — our structured program that trains and supports a growing number of stewards to launch, grow, and sustain successful Roundabouts.

Key responsibilities

Content & audience strategy

• Collaborate with the Roundabout team and local stewards to design a content strategy that empowers stewards to deliver what users would find "indispensable" as local content, serving the newsletter, core platform and other content surfaces;
• Use qualitative research and analytics to sharpen our understanding of priority audiences, identify what's working, and decide where to invest next;
• Design and run content experiments to improve user acquisition, engagement, retention, and conversion across all surfaces;
• Develop shared format and voice guidelines that keep content coherent across surfaces, while lifting up local steward perspective and personality;
• Partner with marketing to align acquisition targets/funnel with audience strategy and bring content into that process;
• Design repeatable listening and engagement tactics to help stewards understand and act upon community needs.

Steward training & success

• Coach and support stewards in writing and curating content, which includes feedback on post/newsletter drafts, format guidance, and publishing cadence;
• Provide hands-on support planning, writing, editing and/or copyediting content directly when needed;
• Develop guides, templates, editorial standards and policies, and any other training or reference materials for stewards;
• Turn analytics into clear, actionable guidance stewards can apply;
• Spot ways to automate or simplify recurring production tasks, freeing stewards to focus on original local content and community building;
• Run regular workshops and skill-building sessions for stewards;
• Operate as a jack-of-all-trades support for our stewards that extends beyond audience strategy, including user moderation, product operations, partner relationships, event planning, new community launches, marketing and other needs as they arise.

Cross-team operations

• Work with product, community, and marketing to evolve the newsletter and other new content surfaces as growth channels;
• Provide operational support, which includes scheduling and sending posts/newsletters, managing listservs and other administrative support;
• Represent stewards' perspective in internal product and strategy conversations, and represent the audience's and Roundabout's interests in conversations with stewards.

About You

• Direct experience driving outcomes by designing, executing, and learning from content experiments
• Experience building, editing, or growing a newsletter or social-media product, ideally local or community-focused
• A track record using data and qualitative research to shape strategy
• A strong editorial, curatorial, and creative eye — writing, editing, proofreading, and format/structure design — grounded in audience development
• Strong training and facilitation skills — you can design and lead an effective, participatory online workshop for a group of 5 or a group of 25
• Experience building feedback loops and developing other participatory mechanisms that encourage active member participation
• Comfort operating across multiple distinct communities at once, each with its own voice and needs
• Strategic, operational, and entrepreneurial — a systems thinker who builds repeatable models that scale beyond one community
• Hypothesis → test → learn by instinct, with an accessible, friendly way of giving feedback to volunteer stewards
• Works well with team members across many disciplines, with no ego around doing projects both small and large
• Nice to have: coaching or managing non-professional/volunteer contributors, online community moderation and management, engagement or community-based journalism, social media management, or previous start-up experience
  

More information

• Location: United States or Canada (fully remote)
• Compensation: $90,000 - $120,000 USD per year. This is a full-time, project-based position through September 2027, with potential to extend to a regular, full-time position.
• Reports to: Head of Community Engagement

We know confidence gaps can hold great candidates back — so if you’re excited about this role but don’t check every box, please apply anyway. What matters most to us is genuine interest in building healthy digital public spaces, a willingness to learn and grow, and a commitment to fostering an inclusive, respectful workplace. We especially welcome applications from people whose backgrounds and experiences are underrepresented in tech.