Who We Are:

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. Backed by tech luminaries 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.

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.

Why We Do This:

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.

About the Role

This is RevOps on steroids. You won't just maintain a CRM—you'll build the automated infrastructure that makes our sales team dramatically more effective. Your work splits into two domains:

1. Bridge Building (Pre-RFP)

Government deals are won before the RFP drops. Your job is to build systems that help us get in front of decision-makers early:

• Signal tracking: Build workflows that detect buying signals—job changes at workforce agencies, budget announcements, policy shifts, leadership transitions, new federal funding
• Warm outbound plays: When we close a contract in NYC, automatically identify and score similar opportunities in NJ, CT, PA. Build the sequences that get our AEs in the door.
• Intent scoring: Aggregate signals into lead scores. Push high-intent prospects to reps via Slack or sequencer workflows. Low-intent goes into automated nurture.
• Personalization at scale: Draft AI-powered outreach that references specific local context—their workforce board's priorities, their state's recidivism data, their recent press coverage

2. RFP Infrastructure

When RFPs drop, speed and quality win. You'll build systems that help us respond faster and better:

• RFP tracking: Monitor government procurement portals, SAM.gov, state bid boards. Surface relevant opportunities before deadlines sneak up.
• RFP qualification: Build scoring models that help us decide which RFPs to pursue. Not every opportunity is worth the lift.
• Response automation: Create systems that pre-populate boilerplate, pull relevant case studies, and queue up content for our RFP lead to review—not write from scratch.

The Two Buckets of Output

Everything you build will flow into one of two buckets:

• Plays (automated): Sequences that run without human intervention. Job change detected → email drafted → pushed to sequencer. RFP posted → Slack alert → qualification score attached.
• Rep feeds (human-in-the-loop): High-value signals that need a human touch. You surface the opportunity, draft the email, but the AE takes it the last mile or makes the call.

Who You Are

• You have an engineer's brain and a seller's instincts. You're technical enough to build complex automations, but you think in terms of pipeline and revenue. You ask "will this actually help close deals?" before you build anything.
• You're scrappy and resourceful. You don't need perfect tools or complete data. You find creative ways to stitch together APIs, scrapers, and AI to solve problems that "shouldn't" be solvable.
• You're obsessed with AI and automation. You tinker with new tools constantly. You've probably already built something with Clay, n8n, Zapier, or written Python scripts to automate your own workflows. You see AI as a force multiplier, not a toy.
• You think in systems. You don't just solve one problem—you build infrastructure that solves a category of problems. You see the whole GTM motion as one interconnected system with inputs, outputs, and feedback loops.
• You're a clear writer. Good GTM engineering is half building, half communicating. You document your systems. You write prompts that work. You can explain complex workflows to non-technical teammates.
• You care about impact. You could optimize ad tech funnels or build sales automation for enterprise SaaS. But you'd rather use your skills to help people coming out of prison find careers. The mission matters to you.

Requirements

• Available to work in-person in New York City
• Experience building automated workflows (Clay, n8n, Zapier, Make, or custom scripts)
• Comfort with APIs, webhooks, and basic scripting (Python, JavaScript, or SQL)
• Experience with CRM systems (HubSpot, Salesforce, or similar)
• Strong prompting skills—you know how to get useful output from LLMs
• Raw intelligence and curiosity—you learn new tools fast because you have to, not because someone taught you

Bonus Points

• Experience in outbound sales, SDR work, or growth marketing
• Familiarity with government procurement (SAM.gov, state RFP portals)
• Experience with data enrichment tools (Clay, Apollo, ZoomInfo, Clearbit)
• Background in RevOps, Sales Ops, or Growth Engineering
• You've worked at an early-stage startup or built something from scratch

What Success Looks Like

In your first 90 days:

• You've built an RFP tracking system that catches opportunities we would have missed
• You've launched at least one automated outbound play targeting warm prospects
• AEs are getting signal digests that actually help them prioritize and personalize
• You've cut the time to produce an RFP response by at least 30%

In year one, you'll have built the revenue infrastructure that helps us scale from 8-figures to 9-figures in contracted revenue.

React, NodeJS, Typescript, GraphQL