Political Risk Expert - Fully Remote | Upto $250/hr

Obsidian; San Francisco (CA); Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Obsidian is seeking a senior elections forecaster to author point-in-time political reports and forecasts from a fixed evidence cutoff. You will make directional judgments about polling, win probabilities, and market-implied odds, and explain the causal mechanisms behind expected political and market impacts.

You will also review model-generated analyses and grade them against your own high standards, contributing to high-quality political-risk forecasting and analysis for AI model evaluation.

Qualifications

• Experience in forecasting, polling, or probabilistic judgment
• Strong ability to reason from fixed evidence cutoffs
• Excellent written communication and documentation skills
• Background in political risk or elections analysis preferred

Responsibilities

• Author point-in-time political reports and forecasts from a stated evidence cutoff
• Make and document directional judgments about polling, win probabilities, and market-implied odds
• Explain the causal mechanism behind an event's expected political and market impact
• Review model-generated analyses and grade them against your own standard

Job description

About the work

We are building expert-authored forecasting and research data used to evaluate and improve AI models on real political and financial analysis. Each task asks a practitioner to reason from a fixed evidence cutoff — no hindsight — and document the judgment a strong analyst would have made at that moment.

This role covers political report authorship: elections, polling, and political-risk events.

What you will do

• Author point-in-time political reports and forecasts from a stated evidence cutoff
• Make and document directional judgments about polling, win probabilities, and market-implied odds
• Explain the causal mechanism behind an event's expected political and market impact
• Review model-generated analyses and grade them against your own standard

Who we are looking for

• A senior elections forecaster, campaign strategist, polling or statistical-methodology expert, or political-risk analyst
• A record of making live judgments about polling, win probabilities, or odds — not retrospective commentary
• Strong polling literacy and causal event analysis
• Typically 8+ years of direct experience, or unusually strong evidence of equivalent performance

Backgrounds we look at first: top national polling and election-forecasting organizations, major decision desks, senior analytics teams from presidential, Senate or governor races, and political-risk desks at leading banks, funds, or firms such as Eurasia Group and EIU. Brand-name experience is a strong first-pass signal but is not a hard requirement — direct experience and performance on the work sample determine who qualifies.

Not a fit

Pure communications, journalism, or academic profiles without demonstrated forecasting, polling, or probabilistic judgment.

Point-in-time discipline

Every task is graded on reasoning from the stated cutoff without hindsight, data leakage, confidential information, or material non-public information.