Technical Generalist & Chief of Staff

WhosMyRep; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 85,000 - 95,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid internship

Job summary

WhosMyRep.org is seeking an intern to help build, run, and grow the entire product—from data engineering to content strategy and UX—often within the same day.

You'll own the daily data pipeline, draft AI-generated digests with LLMs, and ensure accuracy against primary sources, maintaining a nonpartisan, defamation-careful voice.

The role blends chief-of-staff duties with engineering, requiring initiative, editorial judgment, and comfort with APIs, SQL, and front-end work.

Qualifications

• Shipping a consumer-facing web product end to end.
• Comfort with APIs, data pipelines, SQL, and at least one front-end framework.
• Active engagement with political news and congressional process; spot inaccuracies in AI content.
• Reading primary sources instead of relying on summaries.
• Design sensibility with civic tech and transparency.

Responsibilities

• Run and maintain the daily pipeline that collects congressional activity.
• Use LLM APIs to draft digests and review for accuracy against primary sources.
• Own data infrastructure end to end: warehouse, jobs, analytics.
• Own full stack from front end to deployment.
• Make rapid UI/UX decisions balancing information density and accessibility.

Skills

APIs

Data pipelines

SQL

Frontend frameworks

Editorial judgment

Civic tech interest

Tools

LLM APIs

Data warehouses

Job description

WhosMyRep.org is an independent, nonpartisan civic-information platform that helps people understand not just who represents them, but what those representatives are doing — how they vote, what they say in public, and how they raise money. Our goal is simple: make the mechanics of U.S. democracy clearer, faster to access, and easier to act on.

About the role

This is the first intern hire at WhosMyRep.org, working directly with the founder. You'll help build, run, and grow the entire product — moving between data engineering, product, content strategy, and UX, often within the same day.

Two things make this different from a normal "technical generalist" job:

• You'll be able to run the whole thing without me. The founder may periodically be pulled into other work for stretches at a time. During those stretches, you are WhosMyRep.org — the supervisor of daily data collection, the fact-checker of the daily digest, the sender of newsletters, and the maintainer of the site, all on your judgment. This is a chief-of-staff role as much as an engineering one.
• Editorial and political judgment matter as much as code. Every day we publish an AI-drafted digest of what Congress is doing. The hard part isn't generating it — it's catching what's wrong: an AI hallucination, a member's spin repeated as fact, a court ruling described as doing something it wasn't. You need to read the primary source (the bill, the ruling, the roll call), know congressional nuance, and protect a nonpartisan, defamation-careful voice.

What you'll actually do

• Run and maintain the daily pipeline that collects what members of Congress say and do — public posts, votes, and legislative activity.
• Use LLM APIs to draft digestible summaries of complex political topics — then review them for accuracy against primary sources, flagging hallucinations and misstatements.
• Own the data infrastructure end to end: the data warehouse, scheduled collection jobs, and the analytics that track engagement and content performance.
• Own the full stack, front end to deploys. (We're deliberately light on implementation details in a public posting — serious candidates get a full architecture walkthrough.)
• Make rapid UI/UX decisions and implement them directly. Balance information density with accessibility.
• Build systems that scale from MVP to production without over-engineering.

Content & growth operations

• Run the semi-automated newsletter system that delivers personalized political updates to readers by district and state.
• Create SEO-optimized digest pages with social sharing; generate social assets; grow reach.
• Balance editorial judgment with data-driven decisions.

Run it when I'm away (the chief-of-staff part)

• Own the daily publishing loop end-to-end and keep it reliable — no silent data gaps, no inaccurate posts shipped in our voice.
• Document what's in the founder's head into runbooks as you learn it, so nothing depends on one person.
• Make architectural and editorial calls with incomplete information, and know what to skip.

You should have

• Experience shipping a consumer-facing web product end to end (a side project people actually use counts).
• Comfort with APIs, data pipelines, SQL, and at least one front-end framework.
• Active, close engagement with political news and congressional process — and the ability to spot inaccuracies in AI-generated content and in members' own framing.
• Instinct for reading a primary source (a ruling, a report, a roll call) rather than trusting a summary.
• Design sensibility, a bias toward action, and genuine interest in civic technology and political transparency.

You probably are

• Early-career or self-taught — we care about what you've built, not years logged. Backgrounds that tend to fit: data science / statistics, government or political science, or the combination.
• Someone who's built side projects that people actually use.
• Comfortable being the only technical person in the room, and steady when priorities shift fast.
• More interested in impact than perfect code — and trustworthy with editorial independence and discretion.

Logistics

Internship: August 15 – December 15, 2026 — designed to convert into the permanent, full-time founding-team role. Austin-based, in-person or hybrid. Full-time.

• Pay: $85–95k salary — the internship is paid at the same rate as the permanent role (annualized over the internship term). WhosMyRep.org is an LLC on a path to nonprofit status, so there's no equity — what you get instead is real ownership of the product and mission from day one.
• Startup intensity: you'll wear every hat, ship daily, and own real surface area from week one.