Instructional Designer

ABOUT EDCARTA

At EDCARTA, we believe that great learning changes lives, and that behind every great learning experience is someone who genuinely cared enough to get it right. We are a service-first company. That means our instructional designers don’t just build courses; they advocate for the people who will take them. Every design decision starts with a single question: what does the learner need to feel confident, capable, and supported?

We’re looking for an instructional designer who can lead with empathy, think deeply about the student journey, and bring both rigor and warmth to their craft.

ROLE SUMMARY

As an Instructional Designer at EDCARTA, you will own the end-to-end design of learning experiences for our clients’ programs. You will collaborate with subject-matter experts, program managers, and technology partners to translate complex content into clear, engaging, accessible learning pathways. Your north star is always the student: their goals, their context, their challenges, and their growth.

Location: Remote in the United States

Salary range: $70-$80k/yr

NOTE: This role sits at the intersection of education, service, and design. Candidates who thrive here see those three things as inseparable.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Champion the Student Experience

• Center every design decision on the learner’s perspective, context, and emotional state.
• Develop learner personas and journey maps that surface friction points before a single module is built.
• Advocate for accessibility, clarity, and inclusive design in every deliverable.
• Conduct empathy interviews with students and incorporate their feedback into iterative redesigns.

Design Thoughtful Learning Experiences

• Translate subject-matter expertise into well-scoped, outcome-aligned learning objectives.
• Script, storyboard, and prototype courses, modules, and learning assets in collaboration with SMEs.
• Apply evidence-based instructional models (e.g., backward design, spaced practice, retrieval practice) appropriate to each audience.
• Design formative and summative assessments that measure meaningful competency, not just recall.

Deliver Service-First Partnership

• Build trusted relationships with client stakeholders, set clear expectations, and communicate proactively.
• Facilitate working sessions that draw out client knowledge while keeping learner needs front and center.
• Respond to feedback with curiosity rather than defensiveness, treating revision as part of the design process.
• Deliver on time, with professional polish, and with full ownership of quality.

Contribute to EDCARTA’s Learning Practice

• Participate in peer reviews and share templates, patterns, and lessons learned with the team.
• Stay current on trends in learning experience design, educational technology, and adult learning research.
• Help us continuously raise the standard for what “good” looks like.

QUALIFICATIONS

Experience

5+ years of instructional design experience in a professional or higher education context

Design Practice

Demonstrated ability to create learner-centered experiences grounded in instructional theory

Empathy & Service

A track record of putting the learner (and the client) first, even under deadline pressure

Collaboration

Comfortable working across disciplines – with SMEs, project managers, and developers alike

Tools

Proficiency working within higher education LMS platforms (Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, Brightspace, or equivalent); comfortable navigating course shells, gradebooks, and content organization in an institutional context; able to adapt design approaches to fit the unique policies, workflows, technology ecosystems, and academic cultures of each partner institution. Use of A.I. from an Instructional Design perspective.

Communication

Strong written and verbal skills; able to explain design rationale clearly to non-designers

Nice to Have

Master’s degree in Instructional Design, Education, Learning Science, or a related field – or equivalent demonstrated experience in lieu of a graduate degree

VALUES FIT

Skills can be developed. Values are harder to teach. We hire for both, but we screen especially hard for the following:

• Empathy first – you instinctively ask “what is this person experiencing?” before you ask “what should we build?”
• Service orientation – you take pride in being genuinely helpful, not just technically correct.
• Intellectual curiosity – you read, you question, you update your thinking when you encounter better evidence.
• Ownership – you don’t wait to be asked; you spot the gap and close it.
• Humility – you hold your design decisions loosely and welcome critique as a gift to the learner.

WHAT WE OFFER

• A mission-driven team that genuinely cares about learning outcomes – not just deliverable counts.
• Meaningful work with clients who want to improve student success.
• Collaborative culture with peer review, shared resources, and continuous professional development.
• Competitive compensation and a flexible, respectful work environment, and great benefits.
• The opportunity to shape what instructional design looks like at a growing company.