Keep an eye on this space for our spring cohort application details! Coming soon!
Join our Crew and Start Your New Career
Take part in our new intensive six-month training in the growing green infrastructure industry. This program is not about sitting in a classroom. Crew members will visit different work sites for active, hands-on fieldwork and learn about maintaining natural drainage systems, plant identification, landscape, and maintenance skills.
Receive Personalized Support
Your SJI career navigator is here to assist you with transportation needs, rental assistance, work gear, and more!
Earn While You Learn
Receive a stipend every two weeks while enrolled
Gain Employment Skills
Earn competitive industry certifications and skills that will make you stand out in this field.
Help Seattle build cleaner and more resilient communities while advancing your career goals!
Participants exploring Cedar Falls. The City of Seattle owns the Cedar River Watershed, which covers 90,628 acres.
Crew members tour the Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Plant in the heart of Seattle.
SOW Corps Training in Action
The Seattle Opportunity Work Corps’ inaugural cohort recently started in the fall of 2024. Despite the stormy Pacific Northwest weather, crew members quickly found out they were happiest out in the elements and getting their hands in the dirt while learning the needs and management of the natural environment.
A key part of this green stormwater infrastructure training is exploring worksites critical to keeping Seattle’s neighborhoods cleaner by capturing polluted runoff water. Site visits so far have included urban areas like Bitter Lake Reservoir and the state-of-the-art Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Plant, as well as large swaths of rivers and forests like the Cedar River Watershed.
Program Details
Seattle Opportunity Work Corps is a six-month training opportunity. It provides essential job training in green stormwater infrastructure maintenance and exposure to other utility-related careers in water, stormwater, and solid waste. The program also provides critical career preparation skills such as resume writing and interview preparation.
What is Green Infrastructure?
Green infrastructure is a cost-effective way to collect and treat rain once it hits the earth and becomes stormwater. This reduces flooding, sewer overflows, and pollution entering our waterways. Examples of this approach are rainwater harvesting and rain gardens. Read Seattle Public Utilities’ information page here to learn more about this growing field.
Partners
At SJI, our work is not done in isolation. We collaborate with other community-based organizations, community colleges and universities, city, county, and state governments, workforce boards, and industry to maximize our potential, expand our reach, and magnify our impact.
As experts in green stormwater infrastructure, Seattle Public Utilities will support the Corps crew lead in hard skills training related to maintaining green stormwater facilities. SPU will also provide exposure to utility operations and careers for Corps members.
Established by the International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 751, the Machinists Institute provides cutting-edge education and training to build a highly skilled and diverse workforce.
This 2023 joint report from SJI and The Nature Conservancy focuses on the workforce ecosystem involved in the Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) sector. The project also includes an interactive dashboard to explore these pathways. It was commissioned by the Green Stormwater Infrastructure Workforce Collaborative, which promotes knowledge sharing and collaborates to create opportunities to develop sustainable, equitable, and inclusive career and employment opportunities within the GSI field for the southern portion of the Salish Sea Region. View the webinar presentation slides for this report here.
This September 2022 report provides a labor market analysis of Port-related industries to help identify in-demand career pathways in maritime and green jobs offering a living wage to workers. View the presentation slides for this report here.
In 2022, SJI was hired to support and inform King County’s green jobs strategy. The SJI Policy Research and Evaluation team worked on the following tasks in collaboration with King County Green Jobs Program: Identify prospective high-growth green sectors, including localized industry sector/market opportunity and workforce trends analysis; assessment of high-demand occupations within identified high-growth industries; and recommendations for integration of industry/market sector analysis and occupational assessments into King County’s Green Jobs Strategy development process. Watch the webinar presentation of this report’s findings here.
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