Location: Brooklyn,NY, USA
The Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) works to reduce poverty and broaden opportunity by advancing the use of data and evidence in program and policy design, service delivery, and budget decisions.
The initiatives that you will work on all share the common goal of delivering more effective services and helping residents address poverty-related challenges. NYC Opportunity operates a portfolio of digital tools and offers our expertise across multiple areas, including facilitating data integration to improve social service performance, easing access to services and programs, and designing new digital and in-person services with agency partners.
The Product team builds, iterates, and maintains a suite of digital products and services that:
improve the lives of low-income and vulnerable New Yorkers; including ACCESS NYC, Growing Up NYC, Working NYC
make the City's its equity, poverty and workforce data more transparent and actionable; such as Equity NYC
design and pilot new tools to improve social service delivery; including My File NYC
support open source and scalable technologies: NYC Benefits Platform, UI Patterns Framework
The team also helps define how the City of New York uses modern, agile and user-centric approaches to build digital products.
The Product Specialist will support our Benefits Access portfolio; a suite of digital and data products that connects millions of New Yorkers to social services and benefits.
Reporting to the Senior Product Manager, they will support driving new feature development, refinements, metric reporting, and maintenance for ACCESS NYC; as well as supporting the growth and adoption of the NYC Benefits Platform, open-source tools we develop and maintain in tandem with ACCESS NYC.
The Product Specialist will work with internal teams of product managers, content strategists, developers, and interns, and also with external stakeholders across government agencies that deliver benefits and services and engage the community of New Yorkers we serve and who will:
Research and manage updates for the ACCESS NYC Benefits Screener, which lets households determine potential eligibility for 40+ benefits based on factors such as income, expenses, and household composition.
Analyze complex eligibility criteria for public benefits
Research, identify, and analyze changes to eligibility criteria, translate into tasks for developers to implement: updating, drafting or deleting income tables, if/then statements, etc.
Lead the design and implementation of new eligibility screen rules, including scoping, working with agency partners on interpreting policy and working with developers to implement, test and launch.
Investigate and identify how we might simplify the process to make it easier for tech and non-tech people to update and manage.
Support the discovery, research and development of new benefits access products and services
Design, execute, and interprets user and web experiments using Google Optimize for A/B and multivariate testing
Produce metrics and analytics reports for benefits access portfolio
Maintain product documentation
Minimum Qualifications
1. For Assignment Level I (only physical, biological and environmental sciences and public health) A master's degree from an accredited college or university with a specialization in an appropriate field of physical, biological or environmental science or in public health.
To be appointed to Assignment Level II and above, candidates must have:
1. A doctorate degree from an accredited college or university with specialization in an appropriate field of physical, biological, environmental or social science and one year of full-time experience in a responsible supervisory, administrative or research capacity in the appropriate field of specialization; or
2. A master's degree from an accredited college or university with specialization in an appropriate field of physical, biological, environmental or social science and three years of responsible full-time research experience in the appropriate field of specialization; or
3. Education and/or experience which is equivalent to 1 or 2 above. However, all candidates must have at least a master's degree in an appropriate field of specialization and at least two years of experience described in 2 above. Two years as a City Research Scientist Level I can be substituted for the experience required in 1 and 2 above.
NOTE:
Probationary Period
Appointments to this position are subject to a minimum probationary period of one year.
Preferred Skills
Ability and interest in learning, understanding, and translating complex information related to government programs and simplifying this for the benefit of the public. Commitment to the mission of advancing greater equality and opportunity. Experience working closely with communities who engage with public services and programs and/or has lived-experience engaging with public services and programs. Experience in policy, government or non-profit, in particular with low-income and vulnerable youth and families is a plus. Can organize work for yourself and delegate tasks to others. Familiarity or willingness to learn data analysis methods and tools like Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, and Google Tag Manager.
Residency Requirement
New York City residency is generally required within 90 days of appointment. However, City Employees in certain titles who have worked for the City for 2 continuous years may also be eligible to reside in Nassau, Suffolk, Putnam, Westchester, Rockland, or Orange County. To determine if the residency requirement applies to you, please discuss with the agency representative at the time of interview.
Additional Information
The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and providing a work environment that is free from discrimination and harassment based upon any legally protected status or protected characteristic, including but not limited to an individual's sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity, or pregnancy.