Senior Learning Experience Designer

Senior Learning Experience Designer

Chicago, Illinois, United States; New York, NY, USA

You are a strategic learning professional and hands-on builder who knows how to turn business needs into learning experiences that measurably improve how people work. You bring a consultative mindset, strong instructional design expertise, and the confidence to guide leaders toward the right solution—even when training is not the answer. In this role, you will partner with business leaders and HR teams to identify performance and skills gaps, design modern digital-first learning solutions, and measure their impact. You will own programs from initial diagnosis through delivery and continuous improvement while helping build a more skills-based approach to talent through clear capabilities, assessments, and development pathways. This is a senior individual contributor role with no direct reports. You will lead through your expertise, credibility, collaboration, and results.

What Makes This Role Different

• Full-stack ownership. You are not handed a design to build or a deck to deliver. You diagnose, design, build, facilitate, and measure.
• AI as a working tool, not a talking point. You use AI to compress production timelines, personalize learning paths, and scale coaching — and you teach others to do the same, responsibly.
• Skills over seat time. Success is measured in demonstrated capability and business outcomes, not completion rates or hours logged.
• Consultative, not order-taking. You are expected to push back when training is not the answer, and to propose what is.

What You'll Do

Consulting & Needs Diagnosis

• Partner with business leaders, HR Business Partners, and subject matter experts to diagnose performance gaps and determine whether learning, process change, tooling, or management action is the right lever.
• Conduct needs analyses using performance data, stakeholder interviews, skills assessments, and engagement or exit insights — and translate findings into a clear, prioritized recommendation.
• Scope and contract work with internal clients: define outcomes, success measures, timelines, and what you need from them.

Learning Design & Development

• Design and build learning experiences across modalities — instructor-led and virtual sessions, self-paced digital modules, microlearning, job aids, simulations, cohort programs, and social or peer learning.
• Develop content and assets end to end, including facilitator guides, participant materials, assessments, and multimedia — using authoring, video, and AI-assisted production tools.

Skills Architecture & Capability Building

• Contribute to the design and upkeep of the organization's skills taxonomy — defining critical capabilities, proficiency levels, and observable behaviors for key job families.
• Build skill-based learning pathways and academies that connect capability gaps to specific, sequenced development — supporting reskilling, upskilling, and internal mobility.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, and Total Rewards so skills data is consistent across hiring, development, performance, and career frameworks.
• Design assessment and validation approaches that show whether a skill has actually been acquired — work products, demonstrations, manager observation, and certification where appropriate.

Learning Technology & AI Enablement

• Serve as a power user and functional owner for the learning ecosystem (LMS / LXP, authoring tools, virtual delivery platforms, content libraries), including configuration, curation, and learner experience.
• Evaluate, pilot, and operationalize AI-enabled learning capability — AI-assisted content generation, adaptive and personalized pathways, conversational practice and role-play, skills inference, and automated feedback.
• Design and deliver AI literacy and AI fluency enablement for the broader workforce, including responsible-use guardrails, prompting practice, and role-specific application.

Measurement & Continuous Improvement

• Define success measures before build begins, spanning reaction, learning, behavior change, and business outcomes.
• Instrument programs to collect meaningful data, and analyze results to iterate — retiring or redesigning what does not work.
• Report outcomes to stakeholders in business language: capability gained, performance moved, risk reduced, cost or time saved.
• Track external practice — learning science, learning technology, and skills-based talent models — and bring back what is worth adopting.

What You Bring

• 5-8+ years of experience in learning and development, instructional design, organizational development, talent enablement, or a related field, with ownership of programs from strategy through measurement.
• A portfolio demonstrating instructional design expertise across multiple formats and fluency in methodologies such as ADDIE, SAM, backward design, or design thinking.
• Hands-on experience administering an LMS or LXP and using tools such as Articulate 360, Rise, Camtasia, Synthesia, Vyond, or Captivate.
• Practical experience applying AI to content development, personalization, assessment, or analysis, with sound judgment around responsible use and human oversight.
• Strong facilitation, consulting, and stakeholder-management skills, including the confidence to engage senior audiences and constructively challenge requests.
• Experience measuring learning impact beyond satisfaction scores and using data to improve programs.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to make complex information clear and actionable.
• A bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent professional experience.

Additional Experience That Will Help You Succeed

• Experience with skills taxonomies, skills-based talent models, or leadership and manager development programs.
• Familiarity with learning analytics, xAPI, skills inference, or talent intelligence platforms.
• Experience in a matrixed, multi-site, or rapidly changing organization, with exposure to change management practices such as Prosci or ADKAR.
• A relevant master's degree or certification, such as ATD CPTD, CPLP, Prosci, coaching, or platform-specific credentials.

Work Environment and Travel

• Comfortable working in a hybrid environment and occasionally supporting learners across time zones.
• Willingness to travel up to 10–15% for facilitation, program launches, or team meetings.

About Us:

Unlock Health is a full-service marketing communication agency, grounded in technology, built for healthcare - and integrated with a managed care consultancy with deep revenue strategy expertise. We brought together leading healthcare firms to solve a core challenge: aligning brand, marketing, technology, and revenue strategy so healthcare organizations can attract and retain patients, grow brand equity, and protect their margins. We help our clients do everything from patient acquisition and brand building, to simplifying complex martech ecosystems, and creating digital experiences. Our work is rooted in clarity, authenticity, and a deep understanding of what moves healthcare forward.

Equality Opportunity Employer Statement Unlock, and its affiliate companies, is an equal opportunity employer dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. We provide equal employment opportunities without regard to an applicant's race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.