KAP 2026-2027 - AI-Native Builder / Platform Associate - Mercatus Center

Stand Together•Arlington, VA

About The Position

The Koch Associate Program (KAP) is a career accelerator for early to mid-career professionals. This specific role is with the Mercatus Center, focusing on rebuilding Marginal Revolution University's learner and teacher platforms using AI agents from the ground up. The associate will be involved in coding, testing, content, and operations, using AI as their primary tool. The role involves prompting, reviewing, and shipping work generated by AI coding agents, with flexibility to take on more ambitious tasks like building new features and running security reviews, or steadier tasks like testing and content updates. There is also room to grow into areas such as data & analytics, support, integrations, and content & QA. The role can be shaped around the associate's strengths and team needs.

Requirements

Ability to prompt, review, and ship work through AI coding agents.
Ability to read AI-generated code, identify errors, and fix them.
High agency: spotting what needs doing and moving it forward without waiting to be told.
Taking ownership as it is earned.
Natural curiosity: asking why things work and digging until understood.
Good collaborator: communicating clearly and working well with a small team.
Judgment with AI output: treating agent output as a draft to verify, not gospel.
Ability to teach oneself new things without being asked.

Nice To Haves

CS degree or coding background.
Experience building things (apps, automations, tools, scrapers, sites).
Creative thinking.
Systems thinking.
Genuine interest in economics.

Responsibilities

Prompting, reviewing, and shipping work through AI coding agents.
Building and testing new platform features.
Helping run security reviews.
Designing workflows and prompts to improve agent-assisted development.
Testing features.
Updating and publishing content.
Keeping the site healthy.
Building, reviewing, and automating reports on learner platform usage.
Standing up a ticketing system and its AI workflows.
Maintaining and improving integrations with third-party services (CMS, analytics, email, automation).
Owning content migration, publishing, and release testing.