If you’re looking for rewarding new opportunities after your military career, it’s time to RiseUp with ServiceNow. That’s what Josh Hamilton has done, and his future has never been brighter.

After a decade of service in the U.S. Army, Josh recently left active duty. During those ten years, he spent time in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria supporting various Special Operations Forces missions, finishing his military career as an Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) Technician.

While Josh was committed to the Army, he was also never home. As a devoted family man, he wanted to spend more time with his wife and three children. So, as the time approached for him to leave the Army, he looked for a new career opportunity that would challenge him while letting him stay close to home.

Josh reached out to Chris, an Army brother who, like him, had been an EOD Technician. Chris had recently been through ServiceNow’s NextGen program as part of the Department of Defense’s Skillbridge initiative, which is designed to help military members build new, marketable skills as they transition to civilian life. Chris gave Josh an overview of the platform and connected him with the ServiceNow NextGen program manager.

For Josh, a ServiceNow career seemed like exactly what he wanted. Although Josh had almost no IT experience—he says that if something didn’t work, he just unplugged it and plugged it back in to see if it would start working. But with Josh’s determination, this wasn’t an obstacle. He gave himself a head start by learning about JavaScript and then began the NexGen program.

That’s when Josh’s determination kicked into overdrive. Josh says that he’s an incredibly competitive person, so he set about breaking the record for the most certifications for a new NextGen graduate. And boy, did he ever succeed. By the time he finished the program, he was a Certified System Administrator (CSA), Certified Application Developer (CAD}, and Certified Implementation Specialist (CIS) in multiple ServiceNow areas, including ITSM, PPM, and CSM. That’s almost unheard of in such a small amount of time.

And those certifications stood Josh in good stead. Upon graduating, he quickly secured a position as a ServiceNow Engineer/Cloud Engineer at Tuatara Consulting, a management consulting firm and ServiceNow partner located in Wisconsin.

Josh enthuses that the NextGen program changed his life and the life of his family. He says that normally you don’t get the opportunity to start a completely new career, but the NextGen program gave him exactly that. He’s got a rewarding role at a great company and feels he’s only just begun to tap the potential of ServiceNow. In the long term, he wants to become a solutions architect, crafting solutions for customers that make work better for everyone. And he has the freedom to live life the way he wants— in fact, he now works from home and has that precious time to spend with his family.

Congratulations, Josh!

When you RiseUp with ServiceNow, your hard work and determination open up vast new horizons. Build a better life for your family and grow a career where your passion is rewarded.