I moved to the US to pursue a career in academia before realizing it's a broken system. Here's how I pivoted to climate tech and found a job that made me happier than ever.

An as-told-to essay was written based on a conversation with Ali Ahmadalipour. The moonshot factory in the San Francisco Bay Area has a software engineer named Ahmadalipour who is 33 years old. It has been edited to make it clearer.

I wanted to become an earth-science professor. I've never been happier in my career.

When I started my master's program, I didn't pay much attention to climate change. I moved to the US to study climate change. I was close to becoming a professor, but I was not happy.

I was aware that the system was broken. Job security was absent, pay was low, hours were long and I didn't want to live in a random small town in America.

I should be searching for jobs in climate tech. I would not be able to get a job at a highly ranked university if I stayed in academia.

I was hired as the director of climate science at Climateai in the Bay Area after more than six months of searching. I worked as a data scientist at a catastrophe modeling firm where I developed programs to predict and calculate the costs of disasters. My salary doubled to six figures.

Two years ago, I was a software engineer at the moonshot factory where I work on applications related to extreme weather events and climate change.

Getting out of academia required hours of studying new skills, and lots of rejection

It was hard to get that first job. I applied to many data-science jobs and got rejected more than I could count.

I spent a lot of time teaching myself new skills. I learned to code in Python and was familiar with climate-data libraries. I improved my resume, practiced my interviewing skills, and built my online presence by sharing my work on social media.

Rejections continued to come. The stress of the daily grind made me doubt if I was good enough. I continued to fight.

Building an online presence helps candidates stand out in a competitive job market

My online presence made me stand out from the crowd. I was able to show my knowledge and skills to a wide audience in order to make myself a thought leader in the climate-tech field.

I shared my story, wrote a guide on how to land a job in geoscience, and created a free online guide on how to use Python to analyze climate data. I started a newsletter to find open positions in climate tech for subscribers.

I have been able to connect with other people in the field. Many people reach out to ask for help with their applications.

Take advantage of the high demand for climate-tech jobs today

It is a good time to get into climate tech. Data scientists and programmers are in high demand at climate-tech companies because of the high demand for funds poured into them by venture capitalist.

The pay is high. With experience, the average salary for these positions is $120,000 a year.

If you want to break in, you need to learn how to code in Python and analyze climate data, show your data to recruiters, and network with people in the field. A concise narrative is important for interviews.