What are the responsibilities and job description for the Academic Coach, Alpha - $150,000/year USD position at Crossover?
- On-site at Alpha School locations: New York City, NY
- Orange County (Lake Forest), CA
- San Francisco, CA
- Santa Barbara, CA
- $150,000 annual salary, distributed weekly. Health benefits begin day one.
- Assistance with relocation provided
Alpha employs AI-driven 1:1 instruction, enabling students to complete core academics in roughly two hours daily. The remainder of their day is dedicated to life skills, pursuing personal interests, and authentic development. At Alpha's most rigorous campuses, students require more than oversight. They need a credible mentor whose personal accomplishments model excellence: someone capable of assessing group dynamics, establishing expectations, and guiding them through obstacles like resistance, distraction, and uncertainty.
Your role is not to instruct in the traditional sense; it's to coach, challenge, and maintain the same rigorous standards you've applied to yourself. You'll invest 80% of your time conducting direct 1-on-1 sessions, small-group coaching, and life-skills workshops. The remaining 20% involves establishing daily expectations: structured openings that create an environment where mediocrity is unacceptable.
The trajectory here is not about ascending into management. It's about deepening impact. You begin by mastering Alpha's methodology and earning students' trust. Within months, you become the individual they rely on to push them beyond self-imposed limits. The true reward isn't a title change. It's witnessing a student who avoided eye contact in September deliver a confident presentation to a room of adults in May.
If you've sought a way to leverage your elite background beyond personal achievement, submit your application now. If you require a prescribed syllabus, a traditional classroom structure, or advancement into administration, this role is not for you.
What You Will Be Doing
- Conducting 1-on-1 and small-group coaching that identifies individual obstacles, establishes ambitious objectives, and ensures students remain accountable for execution
- Facilitating structured life-skills workshops designed for skill acquisition, not engagement alone, drawing on authentic examples from your own elite background
- Evaluating student achievement using platforms like Test2Pass and monitoring development through Coachbot analytics to refine coaching approaches in real time
- Establishing campus-wide cultural expectations each morning via focused kickoffs that consistently reinforce high-performance standards
- Cultivating trusted mentorship with students and their families through sustained high expectations, reliability, and formalized motivation planning
- Creating lesson plans, developing curriculum, or evaluating assignments. Alpha's instructional model manages that independently.
- Presenting to a full classroom of 30 students. Your focus is intensive coaching with small groups, not large-format instruction.
- Supervising other personnel or pursuing an administrative career path. This position centers on direct influence with students, not organizational management.
- Attending faculty meetings or dealing with institutional red tape. Your schedule remains concentrated on student interaction.
- Compromising standards to satisfy benchmarks. If a student achieves 99%, your task is to identify what prevented 100%.
Deliver exceptional student motivation, development, and life-skill proficiency at Alpha's most demanding campuses.
Basic Requirements
- Bachelor's degree
- At least one documented 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
- Willingness to work in-person at an Alpha campus in New York City, NY; Orange County (Lake Forest), CA; San Francisco, CA; or Santa Barbara, CA
- Legal right to work in the United States
- 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
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.
Crossover Job Code: LJ-5740-US-CollegeS-AcademicCoach
Salary : $150,000