Emerge Career’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty and incarceration. We’re not just building software; we’re creating pathways to real second chances. Through an all-in-one platform deeply embedded within the criminal justice system, we recruit, train, and place justice-impacted individuals into life-changing careers.
Our vision is to become the country’s unified workforce development system, replacing disconnected brick-and-mortar job centers with one integrated, tech-powered solution that meets low-income individuals exactly where they are. Today, the federal government spends billions annually on education and training programs, yet only about 70% of participants graduate, just 38.6% secure training-related employment, and average first-year earnings hover around $34,708.
By contrast, our seven-person team has already outperformed the job centers in two entire states (Vermont and South Dakota) in just the past year. With an 89% graduation rate and 92% of graduates securing training-related employment, our alumni aren’t just getting jobs—they’re launching new lives with average first-year earnings of $77,352. The results speak for themselves, and we’re just getting started.
Before Emerge, our founders Zo and Gabe co-founded Ameelio, an award-winning tech nonprofit that is dismantling the prison communication duopoly. like Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, and Jack Dorsey, and by major criminal-justice philanthropies such as Arnold Ventures and the Mellon Foundation, Ameelio became a recognized leader in the space. Because of this experience both Zo and Gabe understood what it took to create change from within the system. After serving over 1M people impacted by incarceration, they witnessed firsthand the gap in second-chance opportunities and the chronic unemployment plaguing those impacted by the justice system. Emerge Career is committed to solving this issue.
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Our students are at the heart of our work. Their journeys have captured national attention on CBS, NBC, and in The Boston Globe, and our programs now serve entire states and cities. And we’re not doing it alone: our vision has attracted support from Alexis Ohanian (776), Michael Seibel, Y Combinator, the Opportunity Fund, and public figures like Diana Taurasi, Deandre Ayton, and Marshawn Lynch. All of us believe that, with the right mix of technology and hands-on practice, we can redefine workforce development and deliver true second chances at scale.
Emerge Career was designed to tackle two systemic issues: recidivism, fueled by post-incarceration unemployment and poverty, and labor shortages in key industries. Over 60% of formerly incarcerated people remain unemployed a year after incarceration, seeking work but not finding it. The reality is shocking, workforce development programs are severely limited inside prison, with only one-third of incarcerated people ever participating. To worsen, the available prison jobs offer meager wages, often less than $1 per hour, and often do not equip individuals with the skills for long-term stable employment.
We call this a Founding Engineer role—even three years in and with multiple state contracts under our belt—for two reasons. First, you'll be one of our earliest product hires, joining a co-founder who has built the platform solo to date. Second, our growth is outpacing our funnel, and the difference between a student who graduates and a student who drops off often comes down to a single screen, a single email, or a single moment of friction we haven't fixed yet. We're at a critical juncture: we can either hire someone to ship tickets, or we can bring on a growth- and product-obsessed engineer who believes that thoughtful funnels, relentless iteration, and a deep understanding of our students can dramatically change outcomes—and dramatically lower our cost of acquisition. We hope that can be you.
This is not a traditional engineering job. You'll own our student learning platform end to end, and the work you ship will directly move our CAC. Every percentage point of improvement in landing-page conversion, application completion, and activation is money we don't have to spend on outreach and paid acquisition—and more students we can serve with the same dollar. You'll live in the funnel. You'll watch session recordings. You'll A/B test headlines. You'll rewrite onboarding flows late at night because you saw three students get stuck in the same place. You'll ship mocks you drew yourself rather than wait a week for design.
The majority of our students access the platform from a phone, often on spotty connections, often on shared or low-end devices. And yet we don't have a mobile app yet—our current platform is a PWA app. We're looking for someone who sees that as the opportunity it is: redesigning core flows for the phone, shipping a mobile-first experience, and treating "does this actually work on a $100 Android" as a first-class requirement. Mobile performance and mobile UX aren't polish—they're the product.
This role blends engineering, product, growth, and design. We're looking for someone who is energized by ownership, obsessed with conversion and completion metrics, and excited to work across domains to make the funnel hum. If you get a dopamine hit from watching completion rates tick up and CAC tick down after a change you shipped that morning, you'll thrive here.
Governments choose us to unify the entire the workforce development cycle – from recruitment, career assessment, vocational matching, training & coaching, to employment, and job retention – building America's future workforce.
Our powerful technology breaks cycles of poverty and incarceration, helping governments operate more efficiently and reduce unemployment.
Salary
$120,000 - $200,000
Equity
0.1% - 0.6%
Location
New York, NY, US
Experience
3+ years
