This is a full time position located from a remote office anywhere in the country with a requirement of up to 50% national travel in accordance with public health guidelines.

What You’ll Do

The Senior Director of Design for the Middle School Math Initiative (MMI) leads the design of professional learning (PL) experiences that are research-driven and scalable. This role translates complex research and district data into multi-year learning arcs that equip educators and leaders to improve student math outcomes and identity development. All design decisions are anchored in MMI’s goals: 50% proficiency and 50% of students identifying as a mathematician by 8th grade. The Senior Director will lead the design of professional learning experiences that transform teacher and leader practice across multiple contexts, ensuring quality, scalability, and measurable student outcomes. This work requires both deep design expertise and senior-level leadership capabilities. The Senior Director reports to the Executive Director of Middle School Math Initiative and supervises a team of directors, managers, and facilitators.

Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Systems Thinking 

• Defines and leads the vision for multi-year professional learning across districts, grades, and schools, ensuring coherence between curriculum, leadership & teacher development, assessment, and facilitation
• Anticipates opportunities for alignment across functions and intervenes early to maintain system-wide coherence
• Collaborates proactively with internal teams to ensure implementation decisions support organizational strategy and long-term student outcomes
• Translates research and organizational goals into actionable strategies that guide multiple design teams while keeping long-term student outcomes central
• Makes high-stakes design trade-offs across multiple schools or districts, balancing fidelity, innovation, and scalability

Design & Implementation Expertise 

• Owns end-to-end professional learning design at the system level, ensuring tools, frameworks, and session designs are coherent, research-informed, and implementable across diverse contexts
• Establishes standards, protocols, and quality benchmarks that connect design with how sessions are implemented, enabling consistency across facilitators and districts
• Guides Director-level designers in making design decisions, clarifying when adjustments should be made in content vs. facilitation, and when to escalate strategic issues.
• Navigates ambiguity across multiple teams, conflicting district priorities, and incomplete or evolving data to make timely, high-impact decisions
• Makes high-stakes implementation decisions that balance fidelity, innovation, and scalability across multiple schools and districts
• Prioritizes resources, timelines, and supports in complex or competing situations to maintain momentum and system-level impact

Research-Informed Practice

• Leads the translation of cutting-edge research into system-level design decisions, ensuring that learning experiences consistently advance teacher knowledge, leader capacity, and student outcomes
• Introduces, tests, and scales innovative PL strategies across districts, and creates feedback loops that inform both design and implementation
• Monitors emerging trends in math education, language development, and student identity to strategically evolve PL approaches
• Introduces tested innovations into implementation strategically, scaling what works while maintaining fidelity

Outcomes Orientation 

• Defines and tracks multi-horizon success metrics: immediate session-level outcomes, short-term teacher/leader practice changes, annual growth, and multi-year system-wide impact
• Aggregates and synthesizes data across schools and districts to identify systemic patterns, evaluate fidelity, and adjust design strategies proactively
• Ensures that PL design decisions drive measurable improvements in student outcomes while supporting leader and teacher capacity to sustain change

Capacity Building & Team Development 

• Builds and leads a high-functioning design division
• Develops pipelines of design leaders who can independently manage complex PL initiatives across multiple districts
• Establishes structures, feedback loops, and routines that allow teams to operate with autonomy while maintaining alignment with organizational priorities

Communication & Modeling Core Values 

• Clearly communicates design vision, priorities, and outcomes to internal teams, senior leadership, district partners, and the field
• Anticipates points of misalignment or confusion in design translation and proactively intervenes to maintain clarity and consistency
• Models MMI’s values and ensures they are embedded across all design work and team interactions

Candidate Qualifications and Traits:

• 10+ years of experience designing, facilitating, or overseeing professional learning for teachers, school leaders, and district leaders
• Secondary Mathematics Expertise: Deep knowledge of secondary mathematics (grades 3–12), including math content knowledge (MCK), math knowledge for teaching (MKT), and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to foster student math identity and improve instructional practice
• Research & Design Expertise: Demonstrated ability to translate complex research into multi-year learning arcs that develop both teacher expertise and leader capacity to scale improvements
• Systems Leadership: Strong ability to navigate complex, interconnected systems (districts/schools) to drive measurable improvements in math teaching and student outcomes at scale
• Implementation Oversight: Experience establishing expectations for facilitator protocols and feedback loops; expertise in monitoring fidelity and adaptation across multiple schools or workstreams
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Proven skill using teacher, leader, and student data—as well as formative evaluation results—to inform program design and strategic improvements
• Team Leadership: Experience leading and coaching teams of facilitators or school leaders; ability to identify patterns and recurring challenges to guide a team toward strategic solutions
• Communication & Trust: Excellent communication skills and the ability to build trust and rapport with educators, leaders, and colleagues across multiple teams

Preferred Qualifications and Traits:

• Track record of successfully implementing professional learning programs across multiple schools, districts, or workstreams
• Experience establishing feedback loops and routines to strengthen organizational effectiveness
• Comfort working in fast-paced, dynamic K–12 or nonprofit environments, adapting strategies to shifting priorities

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Hiring

At Instruction Partners, we know that difference enhances, transforms and strengthens our ability to serve students and schools. We invite and celebrate diversity of all perspectives, and we are deeply committed to ensuring equitable access and voice throughout our organization. Instruction Partners is proudly an equal opportunity workplace, and we value the inclusion of persons who have experienced poverty and/or for whom English is not their first language, and every race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, culture, ancestry, religion, national orientation, age, marital status or Veteran status. Join us, and let's work together to support great teaching and accelerate learning for every student.

Instruction Partners provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Instruction Partners complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.

Compensation:

The salary for this role is $143,750. For internal candidates, salary placement will be determined based on tenure in accordance with the salary schedule. Detailed information about the organizational compensation philosophy can be found here. Competitive benefits and private retirement investment options are available, as well as a generous vacation policy. See our detailed benefits package here: Benefits in Brief Overview. Additionally, Instruction Partners participates in E-Verify. Please see the E-Verify “Notice of Participation” and the Department of Justice “Right to Work ” posters for more information.” 

Our Mission: 

We strengthen instructional leadership in schools, school systems, and states to ensure teachers have the support they need to improve learning experiences and learning outcomes for students - with attention to students of color, students experiencing poverty, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities.

Our Vision:

All students experience an excellent education that prepares them to contribute to their community, achieve economic security, and pursue their dreams.