This range is provided by Crossover. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.
Base pay range
$75.00/hr - $75.00/hr
You understand that the most supportive thing you can offer a student is maintaining uncompromising standards. Your track record includes competing, creating, or excelling at a level few people experience firsthand: national or international athletics, graduation with honors from a leading university, employment at a highly competitive firm, or launching an enterprise from scratch. Now imagine channeling that drive into working with K-12 students who have never encountered someone like you—someone prepared to demand standards they never imagined meeting. If expecting elite performance from students feels too demanding, this role isn't for you.
Alpha leverages AI-driven 1-on-1 instruction so students achieve mastery of core subjects in roughly two hours daily. This structure opens up the remainder of the day for practical life skills, self-directed passion projects, and meaningful development. At Alpha's most rigorous campuses, students require more than oversight. They need a credible mentor whose personal accomplishments establish credibility: someone capable of assessing group dynamics, shaping culture, and guiding them through resistance, distraction, and uncertainty.
Your role is not instructional. AI delivers academic content. Your responsibility is to inspire, coach, and enforce the same rigorous standards you've applied to yourself. Forty percent of your time involves direct 1-on-1 and small-group coaching that identifies obstacles and establishes stretch goals. Another forty percent is spent facilitating structured life-skills sessions designed for competence, not amusement. The final twenty percent is dedicated to morning kickoffs that create an environment where average performance is unacceptable.
The progression here emphasizes mastery, not advancement. You begin by mastering Alpha's methodology and earning student trust. Within months, you become the person students allow to push them beyond perceived limits. The payoff isn't a title change. It's continuity with the same students, year after year, as they mature with your guidance. It's witnessing a student who avoided eye contact in September deliver a confident presentation to adults in May.
This position remains student-centered. Students are the mission, not a platform for career advancement. If your motivation to leave your current position is the work itself, not résumé enhancement, submit your application now.
What You Will Be Doing
Conducting 1-on-1 and small-group coaching conversations using Coachbot analytics and student performance data to identify barriers, establish ambitious targets, and ensure students follow through on commitments
Facilitating structured life-skills sessions designed for competency development, drawing on authentic stories from your own high-achievement background, and evaluating mastery via Alpha's Test2Pass framework
Establishing the campus culture each morning through focused kickoff sessions that reinforce high-performance norms school-wide
Monitoring student development in real time and refining coaching approaches based on data rather than intuition
Cultivating trusted mentor relationships with students and their families through unwavering standards, reliability, and formal motivation planning
What You Won’t Be Doing
Delivering lessons, creating curriculum, or evaluating assignments — Alpha's AI-driven academic platform manages instruction; you manage motivation
Presenting to a class of 30 students (your work is intensive coaching in small settings, not one-to-many teaching)
Supervising other personnel or pursuing an administrative career path (this role focuses on direct student outcomes, not organizational management)
Attending faculty meetings or dealing with institutional red tape (your schedule prioritizes student engagement)
Compromising standards to meet quotas (if a student achieves 99%, your task is to identify what prevented 100%)
Academic Coach Key Responsibilities
Lead outstanding student motivation, development, and life-skill competency at Alpha's most demanding campuses.
Basic Requirements
Bachelor's degree
At least one instance of exceptional achievement in a highly selective, globally recognized domain (examples: national or international competition medals, top-tier university with distinction, highly selective firm or fellowship, elite performing arts institution, or founding and scaling a successful venture)
At least 3 years of experience in student coaching, youth mentoring, athletic coaching, or leadership roles where you measurably raised others' performance
Willing to work in-person at an Alpha campus in Santa Barbara, CA; Santa Monica, CA; San Francisco, CA; Greenwich, CT; Boston, MA; New York City, NY; or Seattle, WA (relocation support provided)
Legal right to work in the United States
Nice-to-have Requirements
Background in elite competitive athletics (varsity D1, national team, or professional level) with experience coaching or mentoring younger athletes
Experience in high-accountability environments like management consulting, investment banking, or military leadership
Track record of youth development through mentoring in non-academic settings (community organizations, after-school programs, sports camps)
Comfort presenting to and building trust with high-expectation families paying premium private school tuition
About Alpha
Want to join a learning rebellion that’s transforming the traditional classroom?
Alpha School is on a mission to reshape education with a bold approach that harnesses AI to accelerate learning and unleash student potential.
They don’t play by the old rules.
Alpha is creating a new paradigm where students master core academics in just two hours a day, freeing up time for hands-on, passion-driven learning that truly prepares them for the real world.
Alpha School is rewriting the rules of education.
Sounds too good to be true? It’s not.
There is so much to cover for this exciting role, and space here is limited. Hit the Apply button if you found this interesting and want to learn more. We look forward to meeting you!
Working with us
This is a full-time (40 hours per week), long-term position. The position is immediately available and requires entering into an independent contractor agreement with Crossover as a Contractor of Record. The compensation level for this role is $75 USD/hour, which equates to $150,000 USD/year assuming 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year. The payment period is weekly. Consult www.crossover.com/help-and-faqs for more details on this topic.