About Us | Vets Who Code - Vets Who Code

New Cohort Starts: Apr 05, 2027
Vets Who Code is a remote-first software engineering accelerator for U.S. military veterans and military spouses. Free. Selective. Outcome-focused. A nonprofit built by veterans who walked the same transition and refused to settle for thank-you-for-your-service.
Retool.Retrain.Relaunch.
Our vision is to close the digital talent gap and ease career transition for military veterans through software development training.
We are not a bootcamp. We are a selective, outcome-focused training program that maps every hour of instruction to verified labor market demand. The shape of the program is the shape of these three commitments.
Every concept we teach carries a market anchor and an evidence criterion — nothing we teach is decorative. If our students can't make money with it, we don't bother teaching it.
Remote-first since 2014. Train from your kitchen table, a barracks, or a PCS move — the program travels with you. Virtual lectures, live mentorship, your timezone.
Be a software engineer. You'll debug, design systems, and ship code under pressure — not memorize syntax for a certificate. Pair programming, code reviews, real production work.
Graduates employed in software engineering roles
Collective alumni earnings to date
Our scale-by-depth target. Small cohorts. Real outcomes.
Always free. Funded by donors, alumni, and corporate partners.
We built Vets Who Code because nobody else was going to. What follows is the unedited version of how a Slack channel turned into a software engineering accelerator that placed nearly every troop who finished it.
For years, veterans like us stepped out of uniform and into a civilian job market that spoke a language we didn't yet understand. Recruiters skimmed past our leadership stories. Résumés disappeared into applicant-tracking systems. The gap between our disciplined experience and the tech roles we wanted felt wider than the ocean we once crossed.
Nobody was solving it — not the transition programs, not the nonprofits collecting thank-you-for-your-service donations, not the bootcamps charging $20K for a certificate. So in 2014, we decided to build the solution ourselves.
Instead of settling for 'thanks for your service,' a handful of us gathered on late-night video calls and asked: what if we built our own bridge? That question became Vets Who Code — a mission to transform military grit into world-class software engineering skill.
Could a free, fully remote program really move veterans into top tech jobs? We were told it was impossible without massive tuition or fancy campuses. We pushed forward anyway. Missions rarely start with perfect resources.
Our mentors emerged from the veteran community itself: senior engineers, tech leads, and hiring managers who had already made the leap. They guided us in translating NATO phonetics into JavaScript functions, after-action reviews into code reviews, and squad tactics into agile collaboration.
Daily pair-programming sessions, weekend hack-a-thons, live code audits. Time-zone differences, career doubts, and imposter syndrome tried to slow us down — but the ally network grew, and mentors showed up on Slack at zero-dark-thirty to keep us moving.
Every veteran faces a crucible project — a full-stack application built under real-world constraints. Graduates emerge with production portfolios, lifelong allies, and offer letters that turn service stripes into six-figure salaries.
Collectively, alumni have earned $20M+ and now ship code at Microsoft, GitHub, Salesforce, JP Morgan Chase, Chewy, Apple, Google, and CBS Interactive. But the journey doesn't end at first employment. Alumni return as mentors and donors, passing on their knowledge and funding the next cohort. The pipeline feeds itself. That's by design.
Veterans are stakeholders, not charity cases. That principle drives everything we build.
A decade in, Vets Who Code has evolved into a remote-first, AI-enabled nonprofit that blends human mentorship with machine intelligence to personalize learning and keep our curriculum evergreen. By 2030 we will have trained 500+ veterans as software engineers, generated $50M+ in collective alumni earnings, and maintained a 97% placement rate — built on small cohorts, not mass enrollment. We scale depth, not volume.
If you're a veteran staring at the civilian tech world and wondering where you fit — this is it. Apply. Show up. Write the next chapter of your mission in code.
A representative sample of the companies hiring VWC graduates. Roles span platform, mobile, data, and consulting. Names are listed for transparency, not endorsement.
Our Theory of Change is the working document that maps every hour of our curriculum to a labor-market outcome. It's how we justify a 97% placement rate to donors, board members, and the troops themselves. Read the full methodology — including the evaluation framework, mentor protocols, and 2030 roadmap.
We can only place 97% of troops because of the people who show up around them. Pick your pathway — apply, mentor, or fund a seat. Every role moves a veteran forward.
If you're a veteran or military spouse staring at the civilian tech world and wondering where you fit — this is it. Cohorts begin three times a year. Selective. Free. Forever.
We need senior engineers who've made the leap themselves. Show up on Slack, run a code review, sit on a final project panel. Two hours a week moves someone's career.
Every troop graduates free. That's only possible because donors, alumni, and corporate partners fund the seats. Tax-deductible. EIN 86-2122804. Transparency seal current.
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© 2026 Vets Who Code — All Rights Reserved
Vets Who Code is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit — EIN 86-2122804. Donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable under the law.