Senior Learning Solutions Design Architect

Microsoft's Global Learning & Skilling (GLS) Team plays a pivotal role in shaping Microsoft's future. We achieve this by crafting an innovative skilling strategy and implementing world-class programs aimed at empowering our employees, managers, and leaders with cutting-edge capabilities.

We are looking for a Senior Learning Solutions Design Architect, a visionary architect with deep expertise in designing and developing intelligent, adaptive, and agentic skilling systems. This role is central to achieving our Learning Strategy ambitions, including mobilizing differentiated skilling at scale, making Microsoft the most AI-fluent workforce in the world, and enabling our People Priority of Innovative Talent & Skills.

You will be at the forefront of designing a cutting-edge portfolio of skilling experiences that can be effectively scaled and customized across org-based skilling initiatives. Partnering with in-business L&D teams, you will steer the development of skilling goals in alignment with Learning Strategy 2.0 and Executive Leadership Council (ELC) priorities. You will collaborate closely with key leadership stakeholders and Learning and Skilling SMEs (subject matter experts) to drive strategic business outcomes through innovative learning and skilling initiatives. You will synthesize cutting-edge learning theories with practical application, ensuring each methodology is adaptable, scalable, and aligned with organizational goals. This position requires a strategic mindset to anticipate future skilling needs and the ability to translate complex learning concepts into clear, actionable solutions for diverse audiences.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond. 

Required Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Psychology, Education, Marketing, English, Communication, or related field AND 3+ years experience in instructional design, experience design, education
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Psychology, Education, Marketing, English, Communication, or related field AND 4+ years experience in instructional design, experience design, education
  • OR Associate's Degree in Business Administration, Technical Writing, Paralegal, or related field AND 6+ years experience in instructional design, experience design, education
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 2+ years experience designing and delivering scalable, performance-driven skilling solutions aligned to business outcomes across matrixed or enterprise environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Doctoral Degree in Psychology, Education, or related field AND 3+ years experience in instructional design, experience design, education
  • OR Master's Degree in Psychology, Education, Marketing, English, Communication, or related field AND 6+ years experience in instructional design, experience design, education
  • OR Bachelor's Degree in Psychology, Education, Marketing, English, Communication, or related field AND 8+ years experience in instructional design, experience design, education
  • OR equivalent experience.

Instructional Design IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $96,500 - $188,400 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $123,500 - $206,400 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until October 27, 2025.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

What You’ll Drive:

Ecosystem Intelligence & AI Integration

• Map the end-to-end ecosystem of tools, systems, and signals that enable agentic learning 
• Understand the capabilities, constraints, and AI integration potential of each system relevant to learning-in-the-flow.
• Recommend integrations, workflows, and design standards that enable high-impact, scalable, agentic solutions.
• Use telemetry to correlate skilling activity with business outcomes (e.g., speed-to-proficiency, retention, readiness).

Strategic Learning Architecture

• Build a strategic design framework and reusable component system for AI-powered learning experiences.
• Define how modular design, personalization, and behavioral triggers can be operationalized across platforms.
• Apply behavioral science, neuroscience, and generative AI to create evidence-based, human-centered learning solutions.
• Use role contexts, workflow data, and learner signals to validate needs and shape solution hypotheses

Skilling Experience Innovation

• Design skilling experiences that reflect Microsoft’s Leadership Principles, Manager Expectations, and Cultural Attributes.
• Rapidly prototype and iterate using design thinking to ensure relevance, impact, and adaptability.
• Ensure accessibility, global readiness, and inclusive design from the start.

Content Design & Management

• Lead the end-to-end design, curation, and governance of skilling content systems across org-based skilling initiatives.
• Architect content strategies that support discoverability, personalization, and reuse across shared disciplines and roles.
• Uses AI to augment the design, iteration, and personalization of learning content
• Apply metadata schemas and signal-based frameworks to optimize content delivery and learner experience.
• Partner with in-business Learning and Skilling teams to curate discipline-aligned content and support cross-academy strategies.
• Build scalable content operations that reduce duplication and accelerate time-to-skill.
• Skilled in maintaining consistency and quality across a distributed or cross-functional design environment
• Uses versioning, component reuse, and documentation practices that support scale and speed

Enterprise Collaboration & Influence

• Align design strategy with enterprise skilling priorities by reducing required learning, scaling manager enablement, and activating behavior- and workflow-based learning signals that drive performance outcomes.
• Partner cross-functionally with thought leaders, product teams, and learning experience leaders to co-create durable, modular skilling solutions that embed seamlessly into the flow of work.
• Influence product group roadmaps and prioritization cycles by translating learner insights, business needs, and performance data into strategic design recommendations.
• Identify opportunities for continuous improvement by leveraging telemetry, learner feedback, and real-world usage patterns to evolve learning solutions and ensure sustained business relevance.

Additional Role Responsibilities:

Program Planning and Development

• Develops, guides, and manages learning programs and initiatives for relevant audiences by identifying organizational needs, securing resources, evangelizing with stakeholders, and prioritizing work.
• Drives alignment of larger learning and skilling capabilities to the strategy of the organization for the most impact.
• Consolidates and connects information across a variety of inputs to build holistic planning in a given segment, coordinate integration efforts, and define the skilling story.
• Supports and prioritizes short and long-term planning efforts that capture the voice of the learner.
• Defines and scopes learning objectives, outcomes, and what others should do with them using a learner-centric approach.
• Determines how to leverage and apply resources available across the business to execute on the plan.
• Manages financial planning and forecasting and determines budgets through assessing financial trends.

Program Execution

• Leads the implementation of core learning programs and systems at a regional level.
• Drives the content improvement process through collecting, examining, and incorporating 360-degree feedback and data to make content adjustments.
• Implements and executes tactically on a strategic end-to-end learner journey and collection of learning experiences and programs.
• Drives the mapping of the necessary points of engagement with relevant stakeholders to enable program and content execution and address operational needs.

Content Review and Confirmation

• Represents their organization as a thought leader in their area when reviewing learning and development solutions and practices in the industry with internal and external clients.
• Provides guidance on how data should be used to see how successfully the content is meeting pre-established learning objectives for various deliverables.
• Evaluates content feedback from relevant stakeholders and partners from feedback sessions (e.g., focus groups) to determine the most important feedback to prioritize and incorporate.
• Drives program/content assessment for the team prior to rollout.
• Ensures established privacy and accessibility standards are being met during content review while considering and tracking potential risks.

Program Success Analysis and Metrics

• Drives the use of data to evaluate relationships and trends across data, create and tell the data story, define capability gaps for the business, improve benchmarking, and drive learning priorities through learner-centric methodology.
• Drives assessment and change management of learning programs and content to determine how they are being consumed by stakeholders.
• Executes on and enables the usage of internal and external tools and business intelligence (BI) systems to pull appropriate data in partnership with relevant BI teams and leaders.
• Drives the evaluation and analysis of programs’ effectiveness by evaluating learning survey analyses, including program metrics (e.g., user satisfaction, participation in the deliverable), return on investment (ROI), behavior change, and business impact.
• Disseminates key performance indicators (KPIs) and the data story broadly with relevant stakeholders and makes recommendations for how to achieve target metrics.
• Acts as a thought leader of the competition and landscape to improve company offerings.

Stakeholder/Customer Collaboration

• Exemplifies leading practices in identifying and developing relationships with key stakeholders/partners across audiences, business units, or verticals/industries to represent their learning-related needs.
• Acts as a customer/stakeholder advocate by integrating their feedback into the program/content development process and aggregating with feedback from peers.
• Leverages deep expertise of local/regional and global perspectives and drives consistent diversity and inclusion efforts with all key learning stakeholders.
• Designs and maintains rhythm of business cadence with key stakeholders and leaders.
• Communicates learning and development approaches to leaders and stakeholders to educate them on and influence buy in and implementation of solutions.

Other

• Embody our culture and values