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Salary: USD 80,000 - 95,000 / annual
BrainPOP, acquired by KIRKBI (the LEGO family holding company) in 2022, is a leading digital learning platform trusted by educators and parents worldwide. With presence in over two-thirds of U.S. school districts and an estimated annual reach of 25 million students, BrainPOP creates engaging, impactful learning experiences for K–8 students.
Reporting to the Senior Director of Learning Design, the Senior Learning Designer is a senior individual contributor who drives learning design work within content initiatives from brief to launch. This role combines strategic design leadership, assessment expertise, team mentorship, and emerging AI-assisted content development.
Key Responsibilities:
Initiative Leadership: Own learning design work within assigned content initiatives, making and documenting key design decisions from brief through launch in partnership with the PM and Senior Director. Translate strategic direction into design frameworks, item blueprints, and content specs. Maintain quality and coherence across collections, catching inconsistencies in grade-band differentiation, cognitive demand, and instructional alignment.
Assessment Design & Item Writing: Write and review formative assessment items at a level that models craft for the team. Set distractor logic standards for initiatives and identify systemic quality gaps. Ensure grade-band differentiation is applied consistently.
Team Development & Upskilling: Provide direct feedback on assessment items and learning design decisions, modeling design thinking rationale to build others' judgment over time. Build shared resources (guidelines, worked examples, rubrics, workshops) when quality gaps reveal systemic needs.
AI-Enabled Content Development: Partner on AI content pipelines, contributing to prompt design, output evaluation frameworks, and quality rubrics for AI-generated content. Identify where AI tooling can improve workflows and bring concrete proposals to leadership.
Product & Cross-Functional Partnership: Represent learning design in product discovery and development within assigned initiative squads. Support on-time delivery by proactively flagging scope, quality, or resourcing risks.
The role is based in New York HQ with remote flexibility for US-based candidates (Eastern Time Zone strongly preferred). Occasional travel may be required. BrainPOP operates a hybrid work environment with remote flexibility and an in-person component.
Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree required; Master's degree preferred in Education, Instructional Design, or Curriculum & Instruction
- 7+ years designing K–8 curriculum and learning experiences for edtech products
- Strong portfolio of K–8 formative assessment items for digital learning products, with evidence of quality ownership across a collection
- Deep knowledge of learning research and classroom application
- Deep knowledge of K–8 standards in at least one core subject area (Science or Math preferred); demonstrated use of standards as design inputs
- Demonstrated understanding of WIDA framework and standards, as well as national (NGSS, CCSS) and state-specific ELD standards (CA, TX, AZ) strongly preferred
- Experience in K–8 instructional design and assessment development for multilingual learners in technology-based products strongly preferred
- Demonstrated experience leading design work within a content initiative—making decisions, managing quality, and coordinating with cross-functional partners
- Demonstrated experience with prompt design, output evaluation, or rubric design for AI-generated content; systematic workflow experience required
- Digitally fluent; comfortable designing for interactive digital environments, CMS platforms, and AI-assisted content workflows
- Strong design decision-maker comfortable making and defending instructional design calls with clarity and rationale
- Craft model: the kind of writer and assessment designer others want to learn from
- Developer of others: gets satisfaction from building team capacity
- Analytically rigorous: can articulate what "good" looks like in reproducible terms
- Strong initiative partner: works fluidly with PMs, editorial, and product teams
