Join
Us
Jobs at New Consensus. We're building the plan to save the economy. Could use some help.
This is not traditional policy work. It's closer to economic architecture.
Lead the research team building the Mission for America — a comprehensive governing blueprint for a sweeping national mobilization. Design interlocking economic systems across 20+ sectors that together add up to a fundamentally different country.
The rise of MAGA and fascism in America can only be stopped when an opposing political movement proves it can deliver real economic progress for the majority of Americans who have been left behind for most of the postwar era. Deindustrialization, the destruction of state capacity, the erosion of public services, and the skyrocketing costs of housing, health care, and every other essential have broken the foundational American promise that every generation will be better off than the last. That is the root of the American crisis, and no amount of political messaging will fix it without a plan to actually start making people's lives better again.
In January 2029, a new president will take office with a chance to do exactly that — and possibly facing something with no precedent in American economic history: AI-driven layoffs of a significant share of the professional and managerial class, with cascading effects that drive collateral job losses across the entire economy. They will need a plan. Not a collection of policy papers. A plan — comprehensive, actionable, and ready to execute on day one.
The Mission for America is that plan. Think of it as the progressive answer to Project 2025: a governing blueprint for a sweeping national mobilization to build a new, clean economy that actually provides prosperity for all Americans — not just the handful of prosperous metro areas where the modern economy happens to work, but the vast majority of the country that has been left behind.
We are looking for a Director to lead this project to completion, and to make it their own.
Most progressive think tanks produce policy proposals designed to be politically realistic — incremental steps that might survive a hostile Congress. That work matters, but it isn't what we do.
The Mission for America is a plan to go all the way: to do what is actually needed to get wages rising again, to create millions of well-paying jobs, to rebuild the homes, buildings, and infrastructure of the America that has been left behind. And it must do so on a timeline that matters politically — making the majority of Americans' lives noticeably and permanently better within the first term, with visible results before the midterms.
This is not traditional policy work. It is closer to economic architecture — designing interlocking systems across 20+ sectors of the economy that together add up to a fundamentally different country. If you have spent your career in policy and have been frustrated by the smallness of what's considered possible, this is the job where you get to think at a completely different scale.
The Director leads a research team to complete the Mission for America. You will manage teams developing detailed plans across 20+ national missions covering different industries and sectors — energy, housing, transportation, manufacturing, care, agriculture, and more.
You will have significant latitude to shape the project's approach, methodology, and priorities. This role is designed to position you for senior policy leadership in the next administration. We are building the plan that the next president will need — and we expect the people who build it to be the ones called on to help implement it.
- Drive the development of detailed, actionable plans across every sector of the economy
- Interview scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, investors, factory owners, workers, and policy experts to ground plans in real-world feasibility
- Ensure that sector-level plans interlock into a coherent whole — not a menu of options, but an integrated mobilization
- Determine the form the plan needs to take to actually be useful in the chaos of a new administration
- Recruit, hire, and manage a team of researchers and analysts
- Build a culture of ambition, rigor, and speed — this is not an academic exercise
- Collaborate with the Executive Director and senior advisors to refine the framework
- Represent the project in discussions with policymakers, potential allies, and future administration leaders
- Build and maintain relationships with the network of people who will serve in government in 2029
Experience that matters most:
- You've worked on policy inside government — in a presidential administration, on a congressional committee, or at a senior level in a federal agency
- You have a network that reaches into the ranks of the people likely to serve in the next administration and Congress
- You've led teams and have strong management experience
- You can write — clearly, rigorously, and persuasively
This is a policy role, not a technology role. But our approach to research is not the usual one. We are building our own AI agents — coding multi-agent, multi-step systems that research topics across dozens of sources, gather and structure data, synthesize findings, and handle the labor-intensive parts of producing rigorous written analysis.
The right candidate does not need to be a technologist. But you do need to be genuinely excited about working this way — and willing to learn the basics: working with GitHub, using command-line tools, writing simple scripts, and connecting to APIs. We will teach you. What we can't teach is the appetite to learn.
Skeptics — economists, journalists, political staffers — will tell you this is unrealistic. They said the same thing about Roosevelt's "impossible" WWII production targets, the New Deal, the Interstate Highway System, and the moon landing. If you are swayed by that kind of thinking, this is not the right role. If it makes you want to prove them wrong, we should talk.
Required reading: Bad Samaritans (Chang, 2007), Destructive Creation (Wilson, 2016), Unprecedented Power (Fenberg, 2011)
Build the core research and analysis behind the Mission for America across housing, energy, manufacturing, care, transportation, and more. Produce technically feasible, compelling visions for national-scale industrial and climate policy — work that can actually be used in government.
Researchers work directly under the Project Director investigating and drafting detailed plans for economic mobilization. Work produces technically feasible, compelling visions for national-scale industrial and climate policy.
- Conduct in-depth research on industry-specific policy, infrastructure, technology, public investment, and economic history
- Become an expert in decarbonization strategies across multiple U.S. economy sectors through reading and interviews with engineers, scientists, business owners, and practitioners
- Draft clear, rigorous sections of the MFA framework
- Collaborate with other researchers to ensure proposals are interlocking, comprehensive, and technically feasible
- Interview experts, practitioners, scientists, engineers, managers, policymakers, and investors
- Incorporate feedback and iterate on policy ideas
- Monitor trends in industrial policy, clean energy, technology, and economic strategy
- Deep interest in the MFA approach; willingness to learn rapidly
- Strong analytical, writing, and communication abilities
- Demonstrated experience in research, policy development, or strategic writing
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced remote environment
- Comfort reaching out to experts and finding difficult-to-locate information
- Self-motivated problem-solver
- Background in public policy, economics, engineering, environmental studies, or a related field
- Experience in industrial sectors, public investment programs, or national economic strategies
Please read the Director listing for full context on the Mission for America, what makes this project different, and our approach to AI and technology.
Required reading: Bad Samaritans (Chang, 2007), Destructive Creation (Wilson, 2016), Unprecedented Power (Fenberg, 2011)
Not policy papers.
A plan.
The Mission for America is a comprehensive governing blueprint — 20+ chapters covering every sector of the economy, designed to be executable on day one of a new administration.
Think WWII mobilization scale. When the country needed to transform its entire economy in under three years, it did. We're doing the same thing for climate, AI displacement, and economic renewal simultaneously.
We want to
hear from you.
We're always interested in hearing from talented people who share our mission. Send us your resume and tell us how you'd like to contribute.