Preschool Scriptwriter, Khan Academy Kids (3-month contract, 20 hours/week)

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 that cover Pre-K - 12th grade and early college core academic subjects, focusing on math and science. We have over 155 million registered learners globally and are committed to improving learning outcomes for students worldwide, focusing on learners in historically under-resourced communities.

ABOUT KHAN ACADEMY KIDS

Khan Academy Kids is a free and fun learning program for children ages two to eight. Kodi Bear and a cast of animated characters lead children on a personalized education journey filled with fun, standards-aligned activities in early literacy, math, executive functioning and social emotional skills. Built by a small but mighty team, Khan Academy Kids is used by millions of children in homes and classrooms around the world. 

OUR COMMUNITY 

Our students, teachers, and parents come from all walks of life, and so do we. Our team includes people from academia, traditional/non-traditional education, big tech companies, and tiny startups. We hire great people from diverse backgrounds and experiences because it makes our company stronger. We value diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as necessary to achieve our mission and impact the communities we serve. We know that transforming education starts in-house with learning about ourselves and our colleagues. We strive to be world-class in investing in our people and commit to developing you as a professional.

THE ROLE

The Khan Academy Kids team is seeking a Preschool Scriptwriter with a passion for preschool storytelling—someone who can spark young children's imaginations through playful narratives, memorable characters, and engaging learning adventures. This is a contract role at $50-100/hr, depending on experience. 

Responsibilities: 

• Craft the overarching narrative and imaginative world of a new product, designing an engaging, age-appropriate story that supports playful language learning.
• Develop compelling characters in collaboration with the design team.
• Write storylines and dialogue for in-app learning activities, ensuring they align with pedagogical goals and feel fun and natural to young children.
• Collaborate closely with product and UX teams to bring learning moments to life through interactive storytelling.
• Ensure consistency in tone, voice, and character behavior across all content.
• Iterate on scripts based on feedback from testing, educators, and cross-functional teams.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 5+ years of experience writing for preschool audiences in games, interactive media or TV.
• Sensitivity to and understanding of global audiences—how stories, humor, and characters resonate across cultures.
• Deep understanding of what captures and holds a young child’s attention, with a knack for writing stories that are playful, funny, and emotionally resonant.
• Expertise developing imaginative worlds, characters, and storylines that support learning through narrative.
• Strong collaboration skills and openness to iterative, cross-disciplinary creative development.
• Bonus: Experience in early language learning or educational content development.

MORE ABOUT US

• Sal’s TED talk from 2011
• Sal’s TED talk from 2015
• Sal's TED talk from 2023
• Our team:  http://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team

OUR COMPANY VALUES

Live & breathe learners

We deeply understand and empathize with our users. We leverage user insights, research, and experience to build content, products, services, and experiences that our users trust and love. Our success is defined by the success of our learners and educators.

Take a stand

As a company, we have conviction in our aspirational point of view of how education will evolve. The work we do is in service to moving towards that point of view. However, we also listen, learn and flex in the face of new data, and commit to evolving this point of view as the industry and our users evolve.

Embrace diverse perspectives

We are a diverse community. We seek out and embrace a diversity of voices, perspectives and life experiences leading to stronger, more inclusive teams and better outcomes. As individuals, we are committed to bringing up tough topics and leaning into different points of view with curiosity. We actively listen, learn and collaborate to gain a shared understanding. When a decision is made, we commit to moving forward as a united team.

Work responsibly and sustainably

We understand that achieving our audacious mission is a marathon, so we set realistic timelines and we focus on delivery that also links to the bigger picture. As a non-profit, we are supported by the generosity of donors as well as strategic partners, and understand our responsibility to our finite resources. We spend every dollar as though it were our own. We are responsible for the impact we have on the world and to each other. We ensure our team and company stay healthy and financially sustainable.

Bring out the joy

We are committed to making learning a joyful process. This informs what we build for our users and the culture we co-create with our teammates, partners and donors.

Cultivate learning mindset

We believe in the power of growth for learners and for ourselves. We constantly learn and teach to improve our offerings, ourselves, and our organization. We learn from our mistakes and aren’t afraid to fail. We don't let past failures or successes stop us from taking future bold action and achieving our goals.

Deliver wow

We insist on high standards and deliver delightful, effective end-to-end experiences that our users can rely on. We choose to focus on fewer things — each of which aligns to our ambitious vision — so we can deliver high-quality experiences that accelerate positive measurable learning with our strategic partners.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, or Veteran status. We value diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we encourage candidates from historically underrepresented groups to apply.

As part of this commitment, Khan Academy will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact careers@khanacademy.org