Overview
Student Performance Strategist, Alpha – $150,000/year USD Jobs in Santa Barbara, CA at Crossover
Title: Student Performance Strategist, Alpha – $150,000/year USD
Company: Crossover
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
You consider it an act of respect never to lower your expectations for a student. You've competed, achieved, or created at a level rarely witnessed firsthand: elite-level athletics, a distinguished degree from a top-tier institution, a position at a highly selective firm, or a venture you founded and grew independently. Imagine channeling that discipline into a classroom of K–12 learners who have never encountered someone with your credentials, pushing them toward standards they didn't believe they could meet. If expecting elite performance from students feels unreasonable, this isn't the right role.
Alpha leverages AI-driven 1-on-1 instruction, enabling students to complete core academics in roughly two hours each day. The remainder is dedicated to life skills, self-directed projects, and meaningful development. At Alpha's most rigorous campuses, students require more than oversight. They need a credible mentor whose record of excellence sets the benchmark: someone capable of reading the room, establishing expectations, and guiding them through hesitation, distraction, and doubt.
Your role is not instructional. AI delivers the academic content. Your responsibility is to motivate, coach, and uphold the same rigorous standards you've applied to your own life. Forty percent of your time is spent in direct 1-on-1 and small-group coaching, diagnosing obstacles and setting high-impact goals. Another forty percent involves facilitating structured life-skills workshops designed for mastery rather than engagement alone. The final twenty percent is dedicated to focused morning kickoffs that establish a campus culture where excellence is the baseline.
The trajectory here emphasizes depth over advancement. You begin by mastering Alpha's approach and earning student trust. Within months, you become the person they allow to challenge them beyond perceived limits. The return isn't a title change. It's continuity: the same students, year after year, maturing with you as their guide. It's witnessing a student who avoided eye contact in September confidently address a room of adults by May.
This position remains student-centered. Students are the purpose, not a stepping stone. If your motivation to leave your current position is the mission itself, not résumé advancement, apply now.
What You Will Be Doing
- Conducting 1-on-1 and small-group coaching sessions leveraging Coachbot analytics and progress tracking to identify barriers, establish ambitious targets, and ensure accountability
- Facilitating structured life-skills workshops designed for mastery, drawing on credible examples from your own elite background, and measuring mastery using Alpha's Test2Pass framework
- Establishing the campus cultural standard each morning through focused kickoffs that reinforce expectations for high performance
- Monitoring student progress in real time and refining coaching approaches based on data rather than intuition
- Cultivating trusted mentor relationships with students and families through consistency, high standards, and documented motivation strategies
What You Won’t Be Doing
- Delivering lessons, creating curriculum, or grading work — Alpha's AI-based academic platform manages instruction; you manage motivation
- Presenting to a full classroom of 30 students (your focus is high-impact coaching in small settings, not large-group instruction)
- Supervising other staff or pursuing an administrative career path (this role centers on direct student impact, not organizational leadership)
- Attending faculty meetings or dealing with institutional bureaucracy (your schedule remains student-focused)
- Compromising standards to meet targets (if a student achieves 99%, your role is to identify what prevented 100%)
Student Performance Strategist Key Responsibilities
Drive exceptional student motivation, growth, and life-skill mastery at Alpha's highest-expectation 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; or New York City, NY (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.
Crossover Job Code: LJ-5740-US-SantaBar-StudentPerform.012
