Intelligence and AI Internship - Summer/Fall '26
About The Position
APCO is seeking seniors and recent graduates to join our full-time, paid internship program focused on artificial intelligence, research and data science. Our interns experience on-the-job training and will be embedded with one or more of our North American office teams. Interns are treated as professional staff, participate in team meetings, actively contribute ideas, and support the development and deployment of AI-powered solutions across client work and internal initiatives. This internship is part of APCO’s Intelligence & AI team. The AI & Data Science intern will help build and test machine learning models, train AI agents, and contribute to the development of intelligent systems that enhance campaign performance, audience targeting, and strategic decision-making specifically for advocacy campaigns, policy initiatives, and reputation management efforts. This internship will sit in APCO's Washington, DC office.
Requirements
- Recent college graduate or senior in class standing, preferably in computer science, data science, engineering, or a related field
- Some proficiency in Python and familiarity with machine learning frameworks with preferred experience in natural language processing libraries
- 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
- Organized and attentive to detail
- Able to multi-task and approach assignments independently
- Available to work 40 hours per week
- Requires US Work Authorization, unable to consider candidates with CPT/OPT/Post-OPT status
Nice To Haves
- Coursework or experience in statistics, survey methodology, or social science research methods or social media listening preferred
- Interest in current events, political processes, corporate communications, and the intersection of technology with public discourse across multiple sectors is a plus
- Interest in contributing to cutting-edge AI applications that combine human expertise with machine intelligence to solve complex challenges in corporate reputation, crisis management, policy advocacy, and stakeholder engagement
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
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate AI solutions into broader campaign strategies working directly with strategists, account teams, and creative professionals on client deliverables for corporations, governments, and advocacy organizations
- 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
- Conduct research on emerging AI tools, techniques, and ethical considerations
- Contribute to brainstorming sessions and strategic planning around AI applications for client projects and internal strategic initiatives
- Perform other duties as assigned
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Intern
