A few years ago, software engineer Eugene Kirpichov left his job at Google to work on climate change. He had a good job in machine learning. But the climate crisis was so urgent, he wrote to colleagues, “that I can no longer justify working on anything else, no matter how interesting or lucrative, until it’s fixed.” A coworker, Cassandra Xia, left at the same time. They quickly heard from a growing number of people who wanted to do the same thing, and started a Slack group to talk about the transition. That group, called Work on Climate, now has 20,000 members.

One in six Gen Z and millennial workers have switched jobs because of climate concerns, according to a Deloitte survey in 2023, and another 25% said they were planning to make the switch. Green jobs are growing, though there’s a shortage of green skills. If you’re ready to ditch your current job for something more meaningful, here’s where to begin.

JOIN A CLIMATE GROUP

On the Work on Climate platform, it’s possible to sign up for office hours with someone already working in a climate job to ask for advice, attend Zoom events to hear how others have transitioned to a climate-focused role, or chat on Slack with others who are farther along in their search for a new job. My Climate Journey, a platform with a paid community, also helps connect people looking for climate jobs or founders launching new climate startups. Some groups focus on specific types of climate jobs, like Climate Designers, which has both a Slack community and local chapters that run in-person events.

When Work on Climate surveyed its members, several thousand people said that they credited the community with helping them find a job. Having the support of others in the job search was critical. “They say that they basically didn’t give up because they had the community,” Kirpichov says. “It is not an easy process, so you don’t want to do it alone.”

LEARN THE SPACE

It’s challenging to begin to understand the science of climate change and the hundreds of climate solutions that are emerging. But online platforms like Terra.Do can help, with a general climate bootcamp and specific classes on topics like carbon accounting. Another site called Climatebase offers a 12-week online fellowship where climate startup founders, investors, researchers, and other experts help introduce the class to a range of climate solutions. Several books also help provide an overview of the challenge and solutions, including Speed and Scale and Drawdown. MIT has a series of short guides to specific technology and concepts, from enhanced rock weathering to what “net zero emissions” means.

“If you’re just beginning your climate job search, it’s important to be comfortable with what the solutions are,” says Kirpichov. “Otherwise, it’s likely that you will look at a job that maybe actually is a great fit and is impactful and you just won’t recognize that it is a great fit and impactful because a lot of things might look niche to you. Like, ‘I don’t know if food waste is really my thing,’ or, ‘I don’t know about methane leaks on abandoned oil wells.’ And then when you learn more about this thing, you’re like, ‘Oh man, why isn’t everybody working on abandoned oil wells?’”

SEARCH TARGETED JOB BOARDS

Climatebase has job listings from thousands of companies and nonprofits working on climate solutions, from product design at energy startups to advocacy jobs in D.C. ClimateTechList, a site started by a software engineer who was looking for a climate job, lets you sort by the company’s focus, such as nature restoration or food, and shares context about the climate impact of the company. Slack communities like Work on Climate and My Climate Journey also share job postings, with the added advantage that you can often chat directly with someone from the company when they list an opening. Climate-focused VC firms, like Lowercarbon Capital and Elemental Excelerator, also list jobs from their portfolio companies.

THINK ABOUT WHERE YOU CAN BRING THE MOST VALUE

When Charles Yang moved from a job as a software engineer to an energy supply chain fellowship at the Department of Energy, he considered three factors: where his skills could be useful, what the biggest sources of emissions are, and what areas of climate work might not be getting as much attention.

“I wanted to be thoughtful about how I jumped into climate, recognizing there are many problems out there and many possible solutions—some of which aren’t real solutions,” Yang says. “The reason I chose to go into public service in the federal government is because after all my exploration of solution space and career paths, I thought this one was the most disincentivized or neglected, due to slightly lower pay, but also the most impactful, especially with all the federal funding through the [Inflation Reduction Act].”

CONSIDER FRACTIONAL WORK

Douglas Greenwell had already had a long career leading sales, strategy, and marketing teams when he decided to transition to a job focused on climate—and he saw that many early-stage climate startups weren’t ready to hire someone for a similar position. “What I found in a lot of cases is that they often needed the value of my experience, but they weren’t ready for a full-time hire. And in some cases, they couldn’t afford it as well.” After leaving a role in sales at a tech company, he started to work as a fractional chief revenue officer at two climate startups. “I think it’s a great way of getting your foot into climate organizations,” he says. It could also help lead to other full-time roles. Networking is key to finding fractional positions, he says.

PIVOT TO A NEW CAREER

For some types of jobs, like product management, it can be hard to get a position at a climate-focused company—both because there are relatively few openings and because a lot of other product managers also want to make the transition. But some other climate jobs have a massive shortage of workers. By one estimate, the U.S. needs 1 million more electricians to meet climate goals. Though it takes time to train to become an electrician, the work is well-paid. Some people also want to make a switch like this because they’re burned out by their desk job and want to work with their hands, whether they’re installing solar panels or repairing wind turbines. “It feels good to be doing something that is unequivocally useful,” Nate Johnson, a former journalist, wrote when he started to train to become an electrician. “After years of writing about climate policy in the abstract, it’s unbelievably satisfying to be directly electrifying everything.”