Summary
Lead a global team of up to 15 instructional designers delivering world-class learning experiences for enterprise, higher-education, and workforce clients. Set creative vision, enforce quality standards, and drive innovation across the organization's learning design practice.
Job Description
Job Description
Global Director of Instructional Design
The Global Director of Instructional Design leads a high-performing, multi-level instructional design organization responsible for delivering world-class learning experiences for enterprise, higher-education, and workforce clients under the direction of the SVP of Operations.
This role oversees a global team of up to 15 Learning Experience Designers (Associate, LXD, Senior LXD), ensuring excellence in content strategy, storyboard quality, client experience, and cross-functional collaboration.
The Director sets the creative and instructional vision for the team, drives innovation in learning design, enforces quality standards, and ensures that all deliverables reflect the organization’s mission, brand, and pedagogical rigor. This leader partners closely with Product, Sales, Operations, and Development to create high-impact solutions and continuously improve processes, tools, and team capability.
Key Responsibilities
1. Strategic Leadership & Vision
Define and evolve the global instructional design strategy, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and the mission of creating instructionally sound, creative, visually compelling, and immersive learning
Establish, implement, document, and enforce the highest quality standards and design frameworks
Drive innovation in processes, methodologies, artificial intelligence, and the ELB learning tech stack
Integrate and codify AI processes and tools as part of continuous improvement for both internal and client delivery
2. Team Leadership & Talent Development
Lead, mentor, and develop a global team of LXDs across multiple levels, ensuring clear growth pathways and performance standards
Build a culture of creativity, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement
Oversee workload allocation, project staffing, and capacity planning
Provide coaching on client communication, content synthesis, visual storytelling, and instructional strategy
3. Quality Assurance & Instructional Excellence
Serve as the final authority on instructional quality
Oversee content verification, storyboard reviews, and adherence to accessibility standards
Ensure storyboards are appropriately scoped, realistic, thorough, and complete before development
4. Client & Stakeholder Leadership
Act as the executive-level partner for key clients, ensuring learning objectives are met and exceeded
Guide teams in building and maintaining strong client relationships
Support Sales with scoping, pitching, and strategic client conversations
5. Cross-Functional Collaboration
Partner with eLearning Development leaders to ensure seamless handoff from storyboard to development
Collaborate with Development, PMO, Product, Marketing, and Operations to align instructional design with organizational initiatives
Lead cross-departmental improvements in workflows, tools, templates, and design systems
6. Operational Excellence
Establish and manage KPIs for quality, efficiency, client satisfaction, and team performance
Standardize processes for content assessment, SME collaboration, developer notes, and storyboard structure
Ensure global consistency in instructional design practices while allowing for regional nuance and creativity
Required Qualifications
10+ years of experience in instructional design, learning experience design, or learning product leadership
Proven success leading multi-level design teams in fast-paced, client-facing environments
Deep expertise in instructional design methodologies, learning science, and digital learning ecosystems
Demonstrated ability to manage complex client relationships and navigate ambiguity
Strong communication, storytelling, and visual design sensibilities
Experience with accessibility standards (508/WCAG), learning technologies, and cross-functional collaboration
Preferred Qualifications
Experience scaling global teams and building operational systems for creative organizations
Background in enterprise learning, higher education, or workforce development
Familiarity with AI-enhanced learning design workflows and emerging learning technologies