Lead Content Developer

Pearson Virtual Schools is transforming how learners experience education online. As our technology and programs evolve, so does how we design, build, and deliver them. This is a new role with the mandate to support that transformation for our curriculum development organization, converting a team of content developers into learning designers who develop curriculum by directing AI agents rather than drafting it by hand, and to build the operating standards that make AI-orchestrated curriculum development a repeatable capability. The person in this seat needs to be equally credible on deep K-12 instructional design and on hands-on generative AI and agent orchestration. This role also works alongside product management to manage the curriculum portfolio, comprised of proprietary and licensed courses, evaluating customer needs, technical requirements, and budget constraints to influence buy vs. build decisions.

This role aligns to industry level title, Director of Learning Design

Key Responsibilities

Learning Design & Curriculum Development 

• Lead the development of high-quality curriculum that supports an effective, engaging virtual learning experience and the achievement of student outcomes 

• Lead continuous improvement of curriculum and development processes informed by efficacy data, e.g. course performance data, assessment item analysis, and student outcome data

Team Transformation & Change Leadership

• Lead the transition of content developers and managers into learning designers and learning design managers, including role redefinition, competency frameworks, and training

• Assess the current team's readiness for the shift and make reskilling, redeployment, and external hiring calls in partnership with HR

• Set the tone and pace for a significant change across a large team, managing skepticism and skill gaps while retaining your strongest people

AI Orchestration Standards & Quality

• Define the standard for effective human-agent collaboration in curriculum production: brief and prompt standards, review checkpoints, and escalation paths for agent errors

• Develop deep expertise of and hands-on experience with Pearson’s proprietary authoring toolset and ecosystem to identify tool enhancement or replacement and process improvements

• Own selection and evaluation of AI content-generation tools and platforms

• Build and maintain a quality assurance framework for AI-generated instructional content, covering pedagogical soundness, standards alignment, accessibility, bias, and originality risk

• Adapt review processes to AI-specific content risks such as fabricated citations and uncredited material

Organizational Design & Delivery

• Redesign team structure and reporting lines to reflect the shift from manual drafting to orchestration and review

• Establish a documented, repeatable agent-orchestration workflow with clear quality gates before content reaches editorial review

• Track throughput and cost-per-learning-unit through a rigorous measurement framework, without compromising instructional quality

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with product, curriculum leadership, and compliance to ensure agent-orchestrated content meets state standards, accessibility requirements, and academic rigor

• Represent the team's transformation to senior leadership, reporting on productivity, quality, and risk metrics

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years in curriculum, instructional design, or content development leadership, including experience in K-12 or virtual/online education

• Direct, hands-on experience with generative AI tools for content creation, including prompt engineering, agent orchestration platforms, or AI-assisted production workflows

• Proven experience leading managers, not only individual contributors, through a significant operating-model change such as a reorganization or process transformation

• Working knowledge of K-12 content compliance, including state academic standards, accessibility requirements, and copyright and rights-clearance basics

• Sound enough judgment to say no to weak AI-generated output and defend that call to both the team and to leadership pushing for speed

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience standing up or scaling an AI operations or tooling function, such as prompt libraries, agent QA pipelines, or model evaluation

• Background spanning both content development and management of content developers, having experienced this transition from both sides

• Familiarity with the legal and ethical considerations of AI content in education, including AI-generated misinformation risk

Compensation at Pearson is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and specific location. As required by the California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York State, New York City, Vermont, Washington State, and Washington DC laws, the pay range for this position is as follows:

The minimum full-time salary range is between $160,000 - $170,000.

This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program, and information on benefits offered is here.

Applications will be accepted through Friday, Nov 20, 2026. This window may be extended depending on business needs.

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