From the service to startups: Jameson Albers’ career transition with Align

When Jameson Albers completed his US Army service in 2020, he knew he wanted to try working in tech. He liked solving complex problems under pressure, and felt drawn to the stimulating, flexible opportunities the industry offered. There was only one problem: Albers’ degree was in mechanical engineering, not computer science.

So when Albers discovered Northeastern University’s Align Master of Science in Computer Science program in Vancouver, which prepares students from all backgrounds for a master’s degree in computer science, his next move was a no-brainer: he packed up and moved north.

“Vancouver is just a really cool city,” Albers said, of his choice of campuses. “It’s one of the most dense cities in North America, and so there’s a lot of stuff going on – a really interesting mix of different cultures. It’s really easy to get around with the transit system, and the nature is right there.”

Now, three years after graduation, Albers credits Align with complementing his practical experience with technical expertise, and helping him to land three different jobs since he graduated in 2023.

Of course, going back to school in a new field had its challenges. Unlike a traditional bachelor’s or pre-master’s program, Align requires just two semesters of foundational coursework before students begin taking regular graduate classes, and Albers was initially nervous about coming up to speed.

“Being an Align student, it’s like, man – how am I going to get to the level of a master’s student who’s studied and worked in industry?” Albers said. “But Align will get you up to speed on the fundamentals, and then you can leverage your experience in a lot of different ways. And even if you have a little less initial knowledge, I wouldn’t exaggerate the amount of knowledge other people have – a lot of them are also seeing some of this for the first time.”

Albers credited the transferrable skills from his engineering background with helping him catch on particularly quickly, and by the time he entered classrooms with masters’ students from more traditional backgrounds, there was no doubt in his mind that he was studying among his peers. Because Align flowed straight into the MSCS program, he appreciated that he could spend his free time exploring his new home instead of writing more applications.

“The nice thing with the Align program is you get accepted to one program; you do the Align coursework, and then you just go straight into the masters,” Albers explained.

In addition to his classes, Albers spent much of his second year conducting research with teaching professor Richard Hoshino. There, he learned about optimization by helping create the best possible class schedules for local Vancouver schools, eventually publishing a paper on optimization with Hoshino that was accepted into PATAT 2024.

“He is an excellent professor – I initially had his course for discrete structures,” Albers said. “He’s a mathematician, and so everything we did was very rigorous. The focus was not just on getting the right answer; it was on showing your thought process and mathematically proving this is the right answer.”

But more than any class or conference, Albers’ most valuable takeaway from his time at Northeastern was his professional network. Since graduating in 2023, he has progressed through three different roles – as a software developer at a consulting firm, a senior solutions architect at a quantum computing supplier, and a senior software systems engineer at a stealth startup – and all three opportunities came through connections he made on the Vancouver campus.

That’s one of the good things to get from Northeastern: there’s a blend of academia and industry collaboration. If you reach out and make those connections with everyone that’s there, you never know what will pop up.

“That’s one of the good things to get from Northeastern: there’s a blend of academia and industry collaboration. If you reach out and make those connections with everyone that’s there, you never know what will pop up,” Albers said. “And the school puts a lot of serious work into career development. The on-campus resources – preparing for interviews, managing your different career options – that kind of stuff was really helpful.”

Now six years on from his discharge, Albers is feeling comfortable and confident in his second career. He’s considering trying to move into management in the coming years, or going back to school for a Ph.D. in optimization, a topic he discovered he was passionate about while working with Professor Hoshino. He encouraged other veterans transitioning out of service not to limit their career options, and to look into the Align program if they were curious about computer science.

“In my experience, a lot of veterans feel somewhat limited in the types of careers they can transition into,” Albers said. “Probably 90 percent of the people I know that come from my background – transitioning military officers – go for a very business-focused degree or first civilian role, and I think that’s great if you like that. But don’t feel like you have to, just because you don’t have a technical background.”