About the role
Software Engineer (Pedagogy)
About us
We are a well funded, early stage team building Playcademy, a gamified learning platform for K to 6 students that lets them earn real game time by doing their academic work.
The role
Every Playcademy game is a piece of software that teaches. This role sits exactly at the intersection of engineering and teaching. You are a software engineer who understands how learning works when it is delivered through software. You take lesson designs from our educators and learning scientists and turn them into interactive experiences in the UI. You implement tutorials, guided practice, feedback loops, and progression that respects how kids actually learn. You have shipped for the web, you drive AI coding tools daily, and you have spent enough time in edtech to know what separates software that teaches from software that merely quizzes.
What you will do
- Implement lessons and tutorials as interactive UI: guided flows, worked examples, hints, feedback, and mastery checks
- Work directly with educators and learning scientists to translate pedagogy into product, and push back when a design will not survive contact with a six year old
- Build the frontend systems that lesson content runs on: reusable interaction patterns, progression logic, and state that tracks real understanding
- Drive coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, etc.) daily to ship learning experiences as working code
- Prototype fast, playtest with real kids and families, and iterate on what the data and the classroom tell you
What we are looking for
- Real edtech experience, you have built learning software before
- Strong web development experience
- Frontend skills good enough to implement lessons and tutorials into polished, kid friendly UI
- Daily, fluent use of AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, etc.)
- An eye for the pedagogy and understanding of instructional design: scaffolding, feedback timing, cognitive load, and why they matter
- Genuine interest in the future of education
Nice to have
- Experience with K to 6 products or products used by young children
- Background working alongside curriculum designers, teachers, or learning scientists
- Game development experience
What we offer
- Up to $100/hr, full time, Austin TX preferred (remote possible)
- A funded, fast moving product with real users and ambitious long term vision
- A small, high impact team with fast decision making
How to apply
Take a look at our landing page and try our games, then tell us about your experience in edtech and games and how they relate to what we are building. Please also explain in depth your experience with agentic coding. Please email your resume, portfolio, and relevant materials to careers@playcademy.net.
Social Media & Content Producer
About us
We are a well funded, early stage team building Playcademy, a gamified learning platform for K to 6 students. We design every course with expert educators and learning scientists, and we are bringing our apps to market one at a time, starting with kindergarten math this fall.
The role
Our marketing content shows the real thing: the products, the experts who design them, and the families using them. We help parents tell the apps that teach from the ones that just grab their kid's attention.
The main engine is a weekly long form show. We record remote conversations with the designers and learning scientists behind each app about the choices and philosophy that went into it. We also host office hours for parents and their kids. The team is spread across many timezones, so recordings happen online and don't need you in the room. You get a rough cut and a brief to start with. You take it from there: the final edit, a proper audio mix, in-app footage you capture yourself, and the week's cutdowns, thumbnails, and posts. Long form lives in an archive on our website; clips run on X, Instagram, and Facebook, with more platforms as we grow.
You are our first dedicated content hire. You own the calendar and tell us what you need from whom and when. As the team grows, new hires will run the pipeline you set up.
What you will do
- Edit a weekly long form episode from multi-camera remote recordings, including a real audio mix (we record in Descript; you take the stems from there)
- Capture gameplay from our apps yourself and cut it in to show what we are talking about, which means learning the products, our philosophy, and our go to market strategy
- Produce the full episode and cut it into short clips for X, Instagram, and Facebook, with thumbnails, captions, and post copy that fits each platform
- Publish across channels and keep the long form archive on our site in order
- Own the content calendar: know what ships next week, flag gaps early, and pull in what you need without being chased
- Grow into social strategy as far as you want to take it: formats, channel growth, analytics
- If you are in Austin: occasional in person shoots with families, schools, and the team
What we are looking for
- You have produced and edited video or podcast content on a regular cadence and can show the work
- Strong audio post skills: you can make remote recordings sound professional
- Short form instincts: you can find the hook in a math game clip or a designer's story
- Self direction: we are a small team with a lot going on, and nobody will project manage you
- Genuine interest in education and respect for parents as the audience. You will need to become an expert in our product and the space we work in
Nice to have
- Social media management for a brand with real reach and budget
- Motion graphics and thumbnail design chops
- Experience with kids, family, or education brands where trust matters
- Based in Austin, TX
What we offer
- Up to $60/hr depending on experience, full time contract
- Austin preferred
- Ownership of the content pipeline from day one, with the team growing around you as our apps launch grade by grade
- Real material every week: learning scientists, designers, gameplay, and families
- A small team that decides fast
How to apply
Please email your portfolio, resume, and relevant materials to careers@playcademy.net. Please also take a look at our landing page and try our games, then tell us how you would turn what you saw into content and how to reach users (parents and children).
GTM Engineer
About us
We are a well funded, early stage team building Playcademy, a gamified learning platform for K to 6 students that lets them earn real game time by doing their academic work.
The role
Playcademy grows or dies on whether parents ever hear about it. You make sure they do. We are launching a family of learning apps, each with its own positioning and landing page under one brand, and the funnel runs from a first video view through a playable demo to the waitlist and, soon, checkout. GTM engineering here means building that machine, not running a playbook: landing experiments, attribution, lifecycle automation, referral loops, and AI assisted outreach, shipped as real software in our codebase. You work directly with leadership as the first dedicated growth hire.
What you will do
- Own the funnel end to end: first touch, demo play, waitlist, launch day conversion, referral
- Ship landing page and messaging experiments per app, with proper attribution behind every test
- Instrument the whole journey, from a short form hook to a finished demo session, into dashboards leadership actually uses
- Build lifecycle automation that turns followers and waitlists into launch day families (email, SMS, in product nudges)
- Build referral and partnership mechanics for a market that runs on word of mouth: parent communities, trusted educators, schools
- Stand up AI assisted outbound to parenting influencers and curriculum reviewers, and keep the follow up human
- Drive coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, etc.) daily to ship growth experiments as working code
What we are looking for
- An engineer who chose growth: you ship TypeScript, SQL, and automations, not slide decks
- Receipts: funnels, experiments, or growth systems you built that moved a real number, and you can say which number
- Fluency with the modern GTM stack (attribution, CRMs, email and SMS platforms, enrichment APIs) and the judgment to keep it minimal
- Daily, fluent use of coding agents in real repositories
- Copy sense: you can write a landing headline and an outbound email that do not smell like automation
- Genuine interest in education and respect for parents as buyers. We sell trust, not clicks
Nice to have
- Experience selling to parents, families, or education buyers
- PostHog (our analytics stack) or equivalent product analytics depth
- Paid acquisition literacy (Meta, YouTube, podcasts), even though organic and referral come first
- A newsletter, community, or audience you built yourself
What we offer
- Up to $100/hr, full time, Austin TX preferred (remote possible)
- Ownership of the entire growth function from day one
- A product parents actually thank us for, which makes the selling honest
- A funded, fast moving product with real users and ambitious long term vision
- A small, high impact team with fast decision making
How to apply
Please email your resume and relevant materials to careers@playcademy.net. Please also take a look at our landing page and try our games, then tell us how you would take Playcademy to market.
2D Artist / Visual Designer (UI/UX)
About us
We are a well funded, early stage team building Playcademy, a gamified learning platform for K to 6 students that lets them earn real game time by doing their academic work.
The role
A versatile 2D art generalist and visual designer to become a key visual owner across Playcademy. The role blends game art and UI/UX, including creating original assets and refining AI assisted visuals. You will work directly with the game developers and leadership.
What you will do
- Create original artwork for characters, environments, and in game visuals
- Refine, repaint, and unify AI assisted visuals into cohesive final assets
- Help design interactive learning experiences with strong visual feedback
- Create mockups, prototypes, and visual explorations for new features
- Support storytelling through visuals (onboarding flows, progress journeys, marketing surfaces)
What we are looking for
- Experience in 2D game art and interactive UI/UX design
- Proficiency with AI tools like Claude Code, Claude Design, Higgsfield, ComfyUI
- Ambition to stay at the cutting edge of AI first visual art
- Ability to work independently and take full ownership of visual direction
- A genuine interest in the future of education
Nice to have
- Coding or real web game development experience is highly preferred: everything we ship is web, no game engines
- Interest in developing subject matter expertise in educational game design
What we offer
- Up to $60/hr, full time, Austin TX preferred (remote possible)
- A funded, fast moving product with ambitious long term vision
- Direct ownership of visual identity and user experience
- A small, high impact team with fast decision making
How to apply
Please email your portfolio, resume, and relevant materials to careers@playcademy.net. Please also take a look at our landing page and try our games, then tell us how you would improve the visual design. Anything you would change about the art, the UI, or the overall identity, and why? Please let us know your experience using AI design tools in your workflows as well.