Senior Search & AI Discoverability Engineer - Khan Academy

About Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission to deliver a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Our proven learning platform offers free, high-quality supplemental learning content and practice covering Pre-K through 12th grade and early college core academic subjects, with a primary focus on math and science. We have over 181 million registered learners globally and are committed to improving learning outcomes for students worldwide, focusing on learners in historically under-resourced communities.

About the Team

The Marketing and Acquisition team operates as a cross-functional engine, partnering closely with Marketing, Philanthropy, Sales, and all product teams to move users from discovery to their first meaningful moment on the platform.

The Role

Search has fundamentally changed. Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude now answer questions directly — often without the user ever clicking a link. At the same time, traditional organic search remains a major acquisition channel for Khan Academy. This role sits at the intersection of both.

As a Senior Search & AI Discoverability Engineer on the Marketing and Acquisition team, you'll own the technical foundation that determines whether Khan Academy's content gets found, indexed, cited, and recommended — by search engines and AI systems alike. You'll spec and ship technical projects.

This is a 12-month contract — a full-time opportunity (40 hours/week) designed for someone eager to make meaningful contributions to high-impact education products while continuing to grow professionally.

What You'll Do

• Research and implement GEO/AEO/AIO strategies — optimizing Khan Academy's content, metadata, and page structure to appear in AI-generated responses across Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT, and other LLM-powered surfaces.
• Conduct regular technical audits and translate findings into clearly scoped engineering projects with measurable impact.
• Build and execute on compelling business cases for product enhancements by combining knowledge of our audiences — learners, teachers, and district administrators — with deep understanding of how search and AI discovery work.
• Instrument and monitor discoverability metrics across traditional search (Google Search Console, organic traffic) and emerging AI surfaces.
• Partner cross-functionally with Marketing teams to prioritize and sequence discoverability improvements.
• Stay current with how LLMs retrieve and cite web content, and bring new techniques back to the team.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of hands-on technical SEO experience, including direct implementation (not just recommendations).
• Ability to own implementation end-to-end — reading, writing, and shipping code (Go and React preferred) to deliver SEO/GEO/AEO/AIO improvements.
• Proven ability to work independently while partnering with engineers, cross-functional teams, and leaders to scope, drive, and deliver SEO initiatives.
• Working knowledge of how AI-powered search and answer engines retrieve, rank, and cite content (GEO/AEO/AIO fundamentals).
• Proficiency with tools such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Semrush, and Ahrefs.
• Experience with creating actionable insights using a variety of analytics tools including Google Analytics.
• Proven cross-cultural competency skills demonstrating self-awareness, awareness of others, and the ability to adopt inclusive perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors.
• Motivated by the Khan Academy mission “to provide a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere."

Nice to Have

• Experience at a content-heavy or edtech platform with high page counts and structured content types.
• Experience with international SEO.
• Experience using Generative AI / LLMs to build products.

Compensation

• Pay Rate: $85/hour USD (40 hours/week, 12-month contract).