APCO is seeking interns to support the development and deployment of AI-powered solutions across client work and internal initiatives, specifically focusing on enhancing campaign performance, audience targeting, and strategic decision-making for advocacy campaigns, policy initiatives, and reputation management efforts.
Requirements
- Some proficiency in Python and familiarity with machine learning frameworks with preferred experience in natural language processing libraries
- Coursework or experience in statistics, survey methodology, or social science research methods or social media listening preferred
Responsibilities
- Assist in building, training, and evaluating machine learning models using Python and relevant libraries (e.g., scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch)
- Support the development and fine-tuning of AI agents for tasks such as content generation, sentiment analysis, and predictive analytics including policy document analysis, stakeholder mapping, message optimization, and regulatory intelligence gathering
- Clean, organize, and analyze structured and unstructured datasets to extract insights from sources including social media platforms, news outlets, government databases, survey responses, and client-specific data repositories across energy, financial services, healthcare, technology, and other key sectors
- Train AI models on project specific datasets including social media data analysis, stakeholder communications, desk research reports, survey reports
- Contribute to APCO’s custom Intelligence & AI solutions development, including bespoke "decision support command centers" for clients, integrating secure, proprietary data lakes with real-time feeds and custom dashboards
- Support the creation of AI-powered dashboards and tools for tracking project specific metrics
- Document model performance, testing results, and technical workflows
Other
- Recent college graduate or senior in class standing, preferably in computer science, data science, engineering, or a related field
- Demonstrated interest in artificial intelligence, data science, or computational modeling
- Interest in working with proprietary AI platforms and contributing to the development of custom intelligence solutions for high-stakes strategic advisory work
- Comfort in a fast-paced environment collaborating with a distributed team including working with non-technical stakeholders such as strategists, policy experts, and campaign managers
- Strong analytical thinking and problem-solving skills with ability to translate complex technical concepts for strategy and advocacy applications
