Public affairs Jobs in Norfolk, VA

## Role Overview Mercor is partnering with a leading AI lab to build a network of government, public policy, and regulatory affairs experts who help train and evaluate frontier AI systems on real-world public-sector work. As a Government & Public Policy Expert, you will apply your professional judgment to author, review, and stress-test tasks spanning the full policy and administrative lifecycle — policy analysis and memo drafting, regulatory drafting and compliance review, procurement and contracting, program and grants management, budget and appropriations, and legislative affairs. Your expertise directly shapes how advanced AI models reason about the decisions that agencies, legislatures, and public institutions face every day. ## Key Responsibilities - Design realistic public-sector scenarios and tasks drawn from your hands-on experience: policy options analysis, decision memos, briefing papers, and issue backgrounders for senior officials. - Build and review regulatory work products — proposed and final rule text, preambles and regulatory impact discussion, public-comment analysis, guidance documents, and compliance determinations against controlling statute and regulation. - Create procurement and contracting exercises grounded in real practice: requirements and statements of work, RFP/solicitation development, FAR and agency-supplement analysis, evaluation criteria, source-selection rationale, and contract administration issues. - Develop program and grants management tasks covering notices of funding opportunity, application review and scoring, subrecipient monitoring, performance measurement, and reporting obligations. - Author budget and appropriations tasks — budget justifications, spend plans, reprogramming and apportionment questions, cost estimates, and fiscal-law issues such as purpose, time, and amount. - Draft legislative affairs materials, including bill analysis, fiscal notes, amendment tracking, testimony preparation, and constituent or stakeholder correspondence. - Review and grade AI-generated outputs for accuracy, completeness, procedural soundness, and fidelity to the governing authority; identify subtle errors, edge cases, and failure modes in model reasoning. - Provide clear, structured written rationale explaining why a given answer is correct, incomplete, or wrong, and collaborate with the team to refine evaluation rubrics and raise the quality bar for this domain. ## Ideal Qualifications - 3+ years of professional experience in government, public policy, or regulatory affairs. - Federal, state, local, tribal, and agency-adjacent experience is all welcome — including civil service and political appointments, legislative staff, regulatory agencies, public authorities and special districts, government contractors and consultancies, think tanks, trade associations, advocacy organizations, and in-house government affairs or regulatory teams. - Depth in one or more sub-domains: policy analysis and memo writing, rulemaking and regulatory compliance, procurement and contracting (FAR, RFP/solicitation, source selection), program and grants management, budget and appropriations, or legislative affairs. - Working command of the administrative process — how authority flows from statute to regulation to guidance to implementation — and of the tradeoffs, constraints, and stakeholders that shape real public decisions. - Excellent written communication, with the ability to explain nuanced reasoning clearly and concisely for a decision-maker audience. - Sharp attention to detail, citation discipline, and comfort evaluating the quality of others' work. - A relevant credential or degree (MPP, MPA, JD, CFCM/CPCM, PMP, or comparable) is preferred but not required — demonstrated hands-on experience matters more. ## More About Mercor Mercor connects the world's top domain experts with frontier AI labs to build the data that trains and evaluates the next generation of AI models. Our expert network spans law, medicine, finance, consulting, and now government and public policy, giving professionals a way to put their specialized knowledge to work on the frontier of AI. ## Application Process - Submit your application through Mercor, including your relevant public-sector background and areas of expertise. - Complete a short screening to help us understand your sub-domain strengths. - Qualified candidates will be invited to a brief evaluation exercise reflecting the kind of work you would do. - Selected experts are onboarded and matched to tasks that fit their expertise. ## About Mercor Mercor is a talent marketplace that matches world-class experts with the companies building the future of AI. We believe the best AI is built on the judgment of real professionals, and we are creating the infrastructure to make that expertise count.