AI & Data Engineering Intern

Grassroots Analytics' mission is to provide innovative data solutions to amplify forward-thinking voices, causes, and people.

Grassroots Analytics ("GA") maintains a detailed database on more than 20 million active American donors, including data on net worth, ideological preferences, political donation history, non-profit donation history, demographics, and contact information.

Who You Are

You're a college student or recent graduate with a Computer Science background who's excited to take on meaningful work and grow in a supportive, high-trust environment. You're looking for real responsibility and the chance to learn directly from experienced engineers who are invested in your success.

What You'll Own

This is a hands-on engineering role where you'll work closely with the team, contributing to code and features that matter from day one. You'll have support when you need it, but also the freedom to take ownership of your work.

• End-to-End Ownership: Guide features from initial concept through deployment and user adoption. You'll see the full picture, not just isolated tasks.
• Build Critical Infrastructure: Help build and maintain the data ingestion pipelines and analyst tools that power our platform. Your work will directly enable insights for clients and internal teams.
• Explore the AI Frontier: Get hands-on experience with cutting-edge AI tools and technologies—think evals, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), semantic data layers, and other emerging capabilities. You'll have the opportunity to research and experiment with new approaches that could shape our product direction.
• Work on Exciting AI Projects: Contribute to research and development initiatives exploring how AI can enhance our data tools and analytics capabilities. This is your chance to learn by doing at the forefront of the field.
• Solve Real Problems: When platform or data challenges arise, you'll help design solutions and contribute meaningfully to the approach we take.
• Learn Through Doing: Deploy new releases, communicate with users, and iterate based on feedback. Each cycle will help you grow as an engineer.
• Direct Mentorship: Work closely with senior engineers who genuinely want to help you develop. Ask questions, pair program, get feedback, and build your skills in a supportive environment.
• Collaborate Across Teams: Work with different groups to achieve shared goals. You'll practice explaining technical concepts to various audiences and translating user needs into solutions.
• Work with Data: Design and perform analysis on our proprietary dataset to help inform product direction and understand your work's impact.
  
  

What We're Looking For

We value potential and eagerness to learn over having every skill mastered. Ideal candidates have:

• Initiative: You're excited to contribute and willing to take on challenges
• Curiosity About AI: Interested in exploring how AI/ML can solve real problems (no prior AI experience required—just genuine interest)
• Growth Mindset: Eager to learn, open to feedback, and excited by new challenges
• Strong Communication: Can explain your thinking clearly and ask thoughtful questions
• Team-First Mentality: Collaborative, supportive, and focused on shared success
• Technical Foundation: Some exposure to technologies like:
• Python, Django, Flask, JavaScript, Vue, Node, HTML, CSS
• Docker, Airflow, SQL, Postgres, Google Cloud Platform, Firebase
• Git, CI/CD pipelines
• Statistical modeling or data analysis (helpful but not required)
  
  

Why This Role Is Different

We believe in giving interns meaningful work and treating you as a developing engineer, not just someone passing through. You'll experience:

• Real autonomy over your projects with guidance when you need it
• Genuine ownership of features that users rely on
• AI exploration opportunities to research and experiment with emerging technologies
• Close mentorship from engineers who remember what it's like to be starting out
• Fast learning cycles that help you grow quickly through hands-on experience
• Broad exposure across the stack—from data pipelines to user-facing features to cutting-edge AI/ML tools
  
  

This internship is designed for those who want to actively contribute and grow, working on real problems alongside a supportive team while exploring the frontier of AI-powered data tools.

This internship pays $27/hr plus a relocation stipend for those coming from outside the DMV area. Strong preference for seniors and graduates. The program will run from January 26th, to April 17, 2025, with the opportunity to continue in the winter based on performance.

Grassroots Analytics is an equal opportunity employer, committed to providing a diverse, inclusive, and welcoming environment where everyone is empowered to do their best work. Grassroots Analytics does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, gender expression, age, national origin, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status.