Key Takeaways
- Most coding bootcamps are designed to open up job opportunities in the tech industry, often providing job placement services and focusing on employability to help graduates launch their careers.
- While high job placement rates are often used as a marketing tool, it’s essential to research the methodology behind these statistics.
- Many bootcamps offer job guarantees that promise refunds if graduates don’t secure a job within a set timeframe. However, the definition of a “job” can vary widely, sometimes including low-paying or part-time roles, which may diminish the perceived value of the guarantee.
- Prospective students should evaluate bootcamps based on the strength of their curriculum, transparency in job placement data, and comprehensive offerings within career services.
The vast majority of bootcamp participants share a common goal: to learn to code so they can land a job and start on a new career path in the tech industry. With the software development tech job market predicted to grow by 17% from 2023-2033, and the average software developer salary coming in at well over $100,000 annually, this should come as no surprise.1
Coding bootcamps & job placement
It should also come as no surprise that coding bootcamps advertise their job placement rates in order to attract prospective students. A high job placement rate, after all, gives crucial proof that devoting time and money to a coding bootcamp will eventually result in student success and a positive return on investment.
Emphasizing job placement also makes sense because career-readiness is at the core of most bootcamps’ missions: They aim to provide the necessary skills and expertise needed to land an entry-level job in a specific tech field. To this end, they’ll also provide helpful career services like technical interview prep, resume and portfolio review, assisted job search or placement services, and networking advice.
In the long term, a bootcamp provider’s interests are aligned with the interests of its students—ensuring successful job placements means ensuring the bootcamp’s longevity. However, it’s essential to note that job placement rates are also an opportunity for less scrupulous providers to artificially inflate their numbers in the hopes of attracting more participants and improving the short-term bottom line. How to avoid being fooled by this tricky accounting? When considering job placement data, always try to access the underlying methodology so that you can see exactly what’s going into the calculations. You might also ask the bootcamp’s admissions counselor directly the following questions about job placements, inspired by the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR) school evaluation guide:2
- How many placements are part-time?
- How do graduates’ salaries compare to the industry averages?
- How many are in another field or otherwise unrelated to the kind of coding advertised (e.g., web developer placements when the bootcamp is geared towards software development)?
- How many placements are in-house at the bootcamp?
- What is the time frame for a successful placement?
What’s a job placement guarantee?
Many coding bootcamps offer job placement guarantees—either in tandem with advertising high job placement rates or by themselves—to further incentivize prospective students to enroll. In essence, a job placement guarantee is just what it sounds like: Students who complete the bootcamp are guaranteed to find employment after they complete their studies. If they don’t find a job within a specified time frame, they become eligible for a full or partial refund. As with job placement rates long-term, job guarantees make sense for both parties: The more successfully-employed alumni there are, the higher the perceived value of a bootcamp’s education, and on the other side, prospective students looking into coding bootcamps to make a career change may consider a bootcamp with a job guarantee to be a more sound investment. Backed by a firm job guarantee, in other words, you can pursue a bootcamp and navigate your career change with nothing to lose.
In practice, however, job guarantees can be more complicated—and potentially less appealing. In fact, many of the concerns you should have about job guarantees are reminiscent of the questions about job placement rates we presented above:
How is “job” defined?
“Job” is a very broad term. When you consider a job guarantee as a value-add to a bootcamp’s offer, make sure you understand what they mean by job. Is it a full-time, salaried position with benefits? Or does a contract role, part-time position, or internship count as a job and thus release the provider from the guarantee? Does the job have to be a coding position—such as a software developer or software engineer position—or can it be any job to get that job guarantee?
Is there a minimum salary associated with the job guarantee?
A job guarantee appeals to prospective students because of its impact on the calculations of a bootcamp’s potential return on investment. A guarantee ensures that, in theory, you pursuing coding bootcamps with job guarantees is a sound investment. But students also pursue coding bootcamps because the return (in the form of a coding salary) is generally substantial enough to offer a short payback period on the investment in education. Landing a $100k/year job as a software developer, for example, means that you could recoup your investment in less than two months after you’ve landed the job. If you are only able to receive a job offer for a $20k/yr contract position, however, and receiving this offer makes you ineligible for a money-back guarantee, the financial calculus becomes drastically different—and potentially unfavorable.
What are the job search requirements to get your money back?
In addition to the minimum salary, you should also take into account that some bootcamps set specific career search requirements that students must meet to remain eligible for a job guarantee. If you have to search for years before becoming eligible for a bootcamp’s money-back guarantee, the job guarantee begins to lose its value. Best practice is to ensure that a job guarantee kicks in within a reasonable amount of time.
What are the requirements to be eligible for the job guarantee?
Eligibility for a job guarantee often depends on successfully completing all program requirements, and successful completion is typically a prerequisite for any job guarantee. These include ensuring perfect—or near-perfect—attendance (a fair requirement) and working through a defined set of job search procedures provided by the bootcamp. If a job guarantee is a factor in your decision to enroll in a bootcamp, make sure you understand these requirements before entering into any agreement.
Do “in-house” jobs fulfill the job guarantee?
While this could very well go under the first question, we’ve separated it out to emphasize it. In some cases, bootcamps offer those students in danger of not finding a job the option to teach or work in an administrative capacity at the bootcamp. On the one hand, this is quite generous and does provide gainful employment and a “home base” as they continue their search. At the same time, however, this probably isn’t exactly what was envisioned when enrolling in a bootcamp with a job guarantee. It could also potentially be a red flag if it’s used to juice job placement rates for marketing.
What about income-share agreements?
In the conversation about job placement and financial investment in bootcamps, you may also encounter income-share agreements (ISAs), a kind of deferred tuition plan. As with job guarantees, these are financial incentives to enroll in a coding bootcamp that are directly tied to what job you can secure once you graduate.
In an ISA, the bootcamp agrees to allow you to attend the boot camp for no up-front cost if you agree to pay a percentage of your income back to them once you land a job. Often, the amount you end up paying will be higher than the advertised tuition, meaning that ISAs are, in essence, a form of loan, and one that the federal government ensures is advertised as such.3
As with job guarantees, it’s absolutely essential to read all the fine print and understand all stipulations before entering into an ISA.
Coding bootcamps with job placement guarantees: How to choose the right one for you
When researching coding bootcamps with job guarantees, you should attempt to optimize for success on two fronts: 1) in-bootcamp emphasis on job placement demonstrated through curriculum and career services, and 2) post-bootcamp job placement success demonstrated through job placement rate and job guarantee.
During bootcamp: Curriculum
A coding bootcamp emphasizing job placement will do so through a curriculum that provides job-ready training, real-world use cases, and opportunities to pursue portfolio-ready projects.
As you review and compare curricula from different bootcamps, focus on how many lessons and units are included that could be immediately utilized in a professional setting. You’ll want to see whether the program helps bootcamp graduates connect the dots from training to utilization.
But you don’t just want to learn how your skills could be applied. You also want to apply them yourself. This is essential not only to gain experience in real-world situations but to produce portfolio projects that you can show off to top tech companies and future employers.It’s important to find a bootcamp that will provide the intensive training relevant to your desired career path. Are you interested in front-end or back-end development? Would you prefer a full-stack bootcamp or do you want to specialize in data science or UX design? As the workforce becomes more specialized, there are bespoke educational options that can help usher you along the path to a successful tech career.
During bootcamp: Career services
In addition to their curriculum, coding bootcamps that emphasize job placement will have robust career support offerings. Writing a good resume can be as difficult as writing in Python, Java, or C++, and if you’re career-focused, you’ll want to take advantage of resume writing support from a career specialist.
Networking is another learned skill that, with the explosion of online job boards, has never been more important. An expert can quickly help you get up to speed with best practices to make your networking efficient and effective.
Of course, networking and your resume both work in service of landing an interview, but interviewing is yet another learned skill that you don’t want to start practicing when you are in the room for your first chat with a prospective employer. A coding bootcamp emphasizing job placement will thus provide low-risk opportunities for you to practice interviewing and receive expert feedback on how to improve.
After bootcamp: Job placement rate
As we noted above, a high job placement rate suggests that a bootcamp successfully helps individuals embark on a coding career path. When researching programs, it’s wise to dive as deep into the data and methodology as you can to ensure the advertised job placement rate is an accurate representation of the training program’s efficacy. The number and quality of job offers received by graduates is a key indicator of a bootcamp’s effectiveness.
After bootcamp: Job placement guarantee
A job placement guarantee can be a good indicator that a bootcamp is confident in the quality of the education attendees receive, and it can also present what seems like a no-risk opportunity to try to break into software engineering, software development, web development, and beyond. That said, remember the caveats we mentioned above: Some job guarantees can be difficult to qualify for, or become void even if you only get an offer for a low-paying internship. Others consider a job in any industry or capacity to be sufficient—including internal positions that bootcamps might offer to avoid paying back tuition. When researching, always look deeply at the structure and job guarantee requirements to ensure they adequately protect you.
Our Picks for Coding Bootcamps with Good Job Placement Rates or Job Placement Guarantees (July 2025):
With the myriad of bootcamps out there, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. When choosing a bootcamp, students should consider their career goals, preferred career paths, and learning preferences—including whether they want to learn at their own pace, in person, or online.
In our picks for coding bootcamps with job placement guarantees or good placement rates in 2025, we’ve taken into account both how well a bootcamp’s curriculum and career services prepare students to get a great job placement and how well (and transparently) they demonstrate this through job placement rate and job placement guarantees.
Bloom Institute of Technology: Full Stack Web Development
"Career Karma entered my life when I needed it most and quickly helped me match with a bootcamp. Two months after graduating, I found my dream job that aligned with my values and goals in life!"
Venus, Software Engineer at Rockbot
Bloom Institute of Technology’s Full Stack Web Development course provides a host of experiences to get students job-ready, from hands-on assignments and team activities, to opportunities to code alongside industry pros. Better yet, it provides extreme flexibility so that students can fit working on their futures into their busy lives. The Full Stack Web Development course comprises 960 hours of study time structured into 24 sprints. While all learning takes place live online, classes are offered seven days a week and are available in prerecorded versions as well. In addition to this instruction, students enjoy one-on-one career coaching, interview prep, and negotiation support. Bloom Institute also offers a whopping 110% tuition refund guarantee if students don’t land a job paying $50,000 within a year of graduating.
Location: Remote
Learning Format: Online
Program Length: 960 hours (self-paced)
Number of Alumni: 4000+
Program Cost: $19,000
Financing Offers: Deferred tuitionJob Guarantee: Yes
CareerFoundry: Full-Stack Web Development Program
CareerFoundry’s fully online Full-Stack Web Development Program provides a comprehensive curriculum in web development, which students progress through alongside dedicated one-on-one expert mentors and tutors. Upon completing the program, students will have a portfolio of projects that they can leverage to land a job offer with the help of the Career Services team. And if a graduate doesn’t land a job offer within six months of graduating, they are eligible for a money-back guarantee.
Location: Remote
Learning Format: Online
Program Length: 5 months (30-40 hours/week) or 10 months (15-20 hours/week)
Number of Alumni: 10,000+
Program Cost: $8,500
Financing Offers: Upfront, monthly installmentsJob Guarantee: Yes
Coding Temple: Software Engineering Bootcamp
Coding Temple’s Software Engineering Bootcamp offers a full-stack curriculum that gives students a functional understanding of web development, programming, database management, frameworks and APIs, and front- and back-end development. Attendees have the option of live online and self-paced study—whatever option they choose, they can take advantage of Coding Temple’s knowledgeable career services team. Coding Temple also offers a tuition refund guarantee if students don’t land a job following their guidelines within nine months of graduating.
Location: Remote
Learning Format: Online
Program Length: ~6 months (self-paced version), ~5 months (live version)
Number of Alumni: 500+
Program Cost: Tiered options
Financing Offers: Ufront, deferred tuition, installment planJob Guarantee: Yes
Chegg Skills: Web Development Bootcamp
Chegg Skills Web Development Bootcamp provides coding instruction aimed at helping students land jobs as an application developer, web developer, game developer, or DevOps engineer. Students learn online in either a full-time or part-time capacity. Students also get access to a dedicated mentor who can provide tips for how to approach the job search and career services such as LinkedIn and resume writing support, and technical interview practice. Students who meet requirements and don’t find a job after graduating are eligible for a tuition refund.
Location: Remote
Learning Format: Online
Program Length: 5-7 months (5-10 hours/week)
Number of Alumni: 1600+
Program Cost: Not available
Financing Offers: Monthly payments, deferred tuition, personal loansJob Guarantee: No
Springboard: Coding Bootcamp
Springboard’s Coding Bootcamp was developed in partnership with Colt Steele, one of Udemy’s top-rated software engineering instructors. The bootcamp focuses on HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for full-stack development. Students also become acquainted with MERN stack tools, APIs, and AI for engineers. Upon graduation, students have a portfolio all their own that they can use for their job search. Along the way, they have access to a personal mentor, along with unlimited access to coding mentors. If for some reason graduates don’t land a job upon successful course completion, they get a full refund.
Location: Remote
Learning Format: Online, full-time or part-time
Program Length: 15 weeks (full-time), 40 weeks (part-time)
Program Cost: $9,900 in full, $13,860 deferred or installment
Financing Offers: Ufront, deferred tuition, monthly payments, personal loanJob Guarantee: Yes
Finding the Right Coding Bootcamp for You
Above, we’ve detailed the ins and outs of what you can expect from coding bootcamps that are advertising job placement and offering job guarantees—including how to be smart about the kinds of data and offers these bootcamps are providing prospective students—along with what should go into your decision-making process as you research. We’ve also provided some ideas to get your research started: Coding bootcamps with high job placement rates or job placement guarantees. As always, you should verify any claims a bootcamp makes either through their website or, ideally, through a conversation with an admissions representative.
We understand how confusing the different options can be. And let’s face it, enrolling in a coding bootcamp is a big decision, both in terms of your future and in terms of your wallet. If you want some more direction in this process, get matched to find the right bootcamp for you.
Sources
1 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm
2 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SyI6LPlYp5_TN5k12usT5_oyCk4veEDs/view
About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers. Learn about the CK publication.
