The Kamala Harris campaign is hiring for almost 60 positions: What they say about her tech-focused, social-first strategy

If you’re looking for a different way to read the political tea leaves, the job postings of the two main party’s presidential candidates may offer some clues. And Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is clearly focused on beefing up its legion of creative and tech-savvy workers ahead of the November election. 

The Harris-Walz campaign currently has nearly 60 full-time paid jobs and internships posted on its campaign website, with a heavy emphasis on roles focused on IT and security, mobilization efforts, and creative projects. The midpoint of the posted salary ranges for full-time roles averages more than $85,000, though a few jobs have starting salaries in excess of $100,000: senior polling and research manager, regional digital director, and battleground digital director.

Even if political campaign roles prove temporary, they are a bright spot in a somewhat lackluster hiring environment. Last week’s monthly employment report showed that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3% in July, the highest rate since late 2021. 

By contrast, former President Donald Trump doesn’t currently have any specific paid roles listed on his website, most likely because he announced in late 2022 that he’d be seeking reelection this year so his campaign is already fully staffed. However, interested applicants can always fill out a general application, indicating the department(s) they’d be interested in working for, and submit their résumé online. For anyone interested in volunteering, the Trump-Vance campaign website directs people to the Trump Force 47 site, where they can sign up for unpaid opportunities to join “the official army of volunteer neighborhood organizers.” 

Fast-moving changes after Biden steps aside

It’s been less than three weeks since Harris joined the 2024 race after President Joe Biden announced he was dropping his reelection bid. Harris has opted to inherit not only staffers from Biden’s reelection campaign but also his Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters. As a result, most of the roles posted for her campaign are on-site in Wilmington, though the campaign does have some remote roles available.

One notable exception, the Harris campaign is seeking to hire a media director in Philadelphia to “reach, engage, and mobilize Black voters” in the state. Polling in this key swing state shows that Harris and Trump are locked in a tight race, with various indicators suggesting that Trump currently has a slight lead.

In an effort to reach younger voters, Harris’s campaign has embraced a social-first media strategy complete with memes and cultural references. Rachel Karten, a social media consultant, posted this week on X (formerly Twitter) that she found five people working on Harris’s social strategy whose average college graduation year was 2020. 

Upon Harris becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee on July 21, one of her various Instagram accounts (@kamalahq) has shared more than 110 posts in that time. That’s more than double the posts from Trump’s Instagram account in the same time frame, though he and his campaign are more active elsewhere, especially on Truth Social, which he formed.

Several of the job postings for the Harris campaign are related to video or social media. The salaries for managers on the various social media platforms range from $65,000 to $85,000; video producer roles pay between $90,000 and $100,000.