Instructional Design Manager

Slater Certified® is an AI-powered workforce development platform serving the water and wastewater sector. The Instructional Design Manager will own the end-to-end creation of learning content, including course design, assessments, supporting media, requirements scoping, SME collaboration, quality review, and platform integration. The role is initially hands-on and will grow into leading a content team.

Responsibilities:

• Design and build course modules, assessments and learning pathways
• Build for different learning styles on the same material - reading, video, worked example, practice, scenario, assessment - so learners are not forced through one format
• Apply adult-learning practice to an audience of working operators with limited study time
• Produce and direct supporting media: video, diagrams, scenario-based exercises
• Keep content SCORM and xAPI compliant and fit for delivery on our platform
• Take a requirement - from a customer, a regulator, or our own roadmap - and scope what the course has to cover
• Run the discovery yourself: what the learner already knows, what the job actually demands, what the assessment has to prove
• Turn raw source material into a teaching structure - a manual, a standard, a specification, or an hour with someone who has done the job for twenty years
• Estimate and schedule content work honestly, and hold the dates
• Work directly with our wastewater SMEs to get the technical content right
• Run the review process: SME validation, pilot testing, and a real feedback loop from learners
• Hold version control and change history on every course
• Keep content current as regulations, exam blueprints and industry practice change - our courses carry state approvals, and the documentation behind them has to hold up
• Work with product and engineering so content fits how the platform delivers and assesses it
• Work with G.A.I.L., our generative AI tutor, so the content and the tutor reinforce each other rather than duplicating
• Use learner analytics to find where people stall, and fix the content rather than explaining the number
• This is a fully virtual role. You will work alone most of the day, with no one sitting next to you and no one checking whether you started
• Reach out first. Much of your input comes from software engineers, product and subject matter experts who are deep in their own work and will not volunteer it
• Keep your own pipeline full - know what the next three pieces of work are, and go and get the direction you need rather than waiting to be handed it
• Say when you are blocked, early and in writing, rather than absorbing it quietly
• Set the content standards and templates the next hires will work to
• Review and raise the quality of other people's content as the team grows
• Help hire the content creators who will eventually report into this role

Requirements:

• 5+ years in instructional design, curriculum development or technical training development
• Genuine instructional design craft - can take raw source material and build a course from it, not just produce content someone else has structured
• Designs for multiple learning styles and modalities on the same material, and can explain why each choice was made
• Has built courses from a written requirement, including doing the scoping rather than waiting for a specification
• Fluent in adult-learning practice and competency-based design
• Hands-on with an LMS or LXP, and with SCORM / xAPI
• Can take a technical subject from a subject matter expert and turn it into something a non-academic adult learner will actually finish
• Excels working solo. This is a fully virtual role and long stretches of it are unsupervised
• Proactive about pulling work and direction - chases software engineers, product and SMEs for what is needed instead of waiting, and keeps their own queue full
• Ready to grow into leading a small content team, and wants to
• Construction-sector experience is a significant advantage, and wastewater or industrial wastewater experience is a very significant one. Someone who has been on or around a plant already understands the work our learners do, and that shortens the ramp on every course we build
• Experience designing for a regulated or certification-bearing field, or with state licensure and continuing education approval processes
• Has built assessments validated against an external exam
• Has managed or mentored other instructional designers or content creators
• Has used generative AI as part of a content development workflow
• Accessibility standards (WCAG, Section 508) applied in practice