Overview
Student Success Strategist, Alpha – $150,000/year USD Jobs in Santa Barbara, CA at Crossover
Title: Student Success Strategist, Alpha – $150,000/year USD
Company: Crossover
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
- On-site at Alpha School campuses in Santa Barbara, CA; Santa Monica, CA; San Francisco, CA; Greenwich, CT; Boston, MA; or New York City, NY
- $150,000/year W2 salary, paid weekly. Day-one health benefits.
- Relocation support for a one-school-year campus commitment
You view refusing to lower the bar as the kindest act you can extend to a student. You have achieved, built, or competed at a level most people only observe from a distance: elite athletics, graduation with distinction from a top-tier university, tenure at a highly selective firm, or a venture you launched and grew from the ground up. Now imagine channeling that intensity into a room of K-12 students who have never encountered someone with your caliber of experience in their corner, guiding them toward standards they never imagined they could meet. If applying elite standards to students strikes you as harsh, this role is not for you.
Alpha deploys AI-powered 1-on-1 learning so students can complete core academics in approximately two hours per day. The remainder of the day is dedicated to life skills, passion-driven projects, and authentic development. At Alpha's most rigorous campuses, students require more than oversight. They need a credible mentor whose personal achievements establish the standard: someone capable of reading the room, establishing the tone, and coaching them through resistance, distraction, and doubt.
Your responsibility is not instruction. AI manages the academic content. Your responsibility is to motivate, coach, and hold students to the same exacting bar you have applied to yourself. Forty percent of your time is spent in direct 1-on-1 and small-group coaching that identifies obstacles and establishes ambitious objectives. Another forty percent involves facilitating structured life-skills workshops designed for mastery rather than engagement. The remaining twenty percent is dedicated to setting the tone each morning through focused kickoffs that cultivate a culture where mediocrity has no place.
The trajectory here is depth rather than management. You begin by mastering Alpha's playbook and earning credibility with students. Within months, you become the person they trust enough to allow you to push them beyond what they believed possible. The reward is not a promotion. It is the same students, year after year, maturing with you in their corner. It is witnessing a student who could not make eye contact in September present with confidence to a room of adults in May.
This role remains student-facing. Students are the objective, not a stepping stone to something else. If your motivation to leave your current position is the mission rather than the resume line, apply now.
What You Will Be Doing
- Conducting 1-on-1 and small-group coaching sessions using Coachbot analytics and student progress data to identify blockers, establish ambitious goals, and hold students accountable for execution
- Facilitating structured life-skills workshops designed for mastery using credible narratives from your own elite experience, then evaluating mastery through Alpha's Test2Pass system
- Establishing the cultural tone each morning through focused kickoffs that reinforce high-performance expectations across the campus
- Monitoring student progress in real time and modifying coaching strategies based on data rather than instinct
- Cultivating trusted mentor relationships with students and families through high standards, consistency, and documented motivation plans
What You Won’t Be Doing
- Delivering lessons, creating curriculum, or grading assignments — Alpha's AI-powered academic model manages instruction; you manage motivation
- Lecturing to a classroom of 30 students (your work is high-touch coaching in small groups rather than broadcast teaching)
- Supervising other staff or advancing through an administrative ladder (this role is about direct student impact rather than organizational hierarchy)
- Attending faculty meetings or managing school bureaucracy (your time remains focused on students)
- Reducing the bar to achieve metrics (if a student scored 99%, your responsibility is to determine what prevented them from reaching 100%)
Student Success 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-StudentSuccess.003
