Instructional Designer Job Description Templates
Free instructional designer job description templates: standard, senior, junior, and freelance, with FLSA and salary guidance. Download as DOCX.
Instructional Designer Job Description Templates
5 templates with FLSA and salary guidance. Download as DOCX.
Most instructional-designer templates online hand you one generic duties list and skip the question that matters most for a smaller company: whether you should hire a full-time designer at all. This is overwhelmingly an enterprise and mid-market role; growing companies more often contract a freelancer or have a generalist own training. Getting that decision right saves you from posting a role you do not yet need.
At FirstHR, we build templates that fit how this role is actually hired, including a freelance scope of work and an honest hire-versus-contract section. The five below cover the main versions and seniority levels, each with the classification and accessibility guidance generic templates leave out. Pick the one that fits, fill in the brackets, and post, and the guide to writing a job description covers the fundamentals.
What Does an Instructional Designer Do?
An instructional designer creates learning experiences: analyzing needs, writing objectives, working with subject-matter experts, and building courses, e-learning, and assessments that help people learn. The discipline is called instructional design; the person is the instructional designer. In federal data the role maps to instructional coordinators (SOC 25-9031), with strong overlap into training and development specialists.
For the employer writing the posting, two facts shape the hire: this is mostly a larger-company role, and the full-time-versus-contract decision comes first. The five templates split by level and employment type so the document matches the real role.
Do You Need One? Hire, Contract, or Generalist
Before writing a full-time posting, decide whether you actually need one. A dedicated, full-time instructional designer is usually justified at scale, under heavy compliance-training load, or when learning content is your product. Below that, contracting a freelancer for projects or having a generalist own training is often the better fit.
Instructional Designer Duties and Responsibilities
Instructional-designer duties cluster into analysis and design, development, quality and accessibility, and collaboration and impact. The mix shifts by level, more strategy for a senior designer, more production for a junior, but these areas hold across the role.
A strong posting grounds these in your specifics: your learners, your content formats, your tools, and your reporting line. For a structured way to scope any role before posting, the guide to defining job responsibilities walks through the process.
Which Template Should You Use?
Pick the template by level and employment type. Standard, senior, junior, and specialist assume a full-time employee; the freelance version is a 1099 scope of work. Use this guide to choose.
5 Free Instructional Designer Job Description Templates
Download all five as a single Word document or copy individual templates. Each follows the same structure: company summary, key responsibilities, qualifications, employment terms, reporting line, and pay, with an EEO statement. Fill in the brackets and post.
Template 1: Standard Instructional Designer
The classic role: analyze needs, work with experts, and build courses and e-learning that help people learn.
Template 2: Senior Instructional Designer
For a maturing function: owns complex programs, sets design standards, and mentors other designers.
Template 3: Junior / Associate Instructional Designer
For an entry hire: helps build content and develops instructional-design skills under guidance.
Template 4: Instructional Design Specialist
Combines content design with hands-on management of your learning platform and content library.
Template 5: Freelance / Contract Instructional Designer (1099)
For outsourced projects: a 1099 scope of work with defined deliverables, rate, and IP assignment.
Instructional Designer Skills and Qualifications
Most instructional-designer roles weigh design knowledge, tool skills, and a strong portfolio above a specific degree. Match the requirements to your level, and separate must-haves from preferences.
| Type | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Design | ADDIE/SAM, learning objectives, adult learning |
| Tools | E-learning authoring tools and an LMS |
| Standards | SCORM/xAPI; Section 508/WCAG accessibility |
| Portfolio | Real work samples (often decisive) |
| Education | Degree common; master's preferred for senior |
Keep requirements job-related and the language neutral, since the EEOC prohibits job advertisements that show a preference based on protected characteristics. For a fuller framework, the SHRM guide to writing a job description covers the standard sections.
FLSA: Exempt or Non-Exempt?
An instructional designer is usually exempt, but the classification depends on the real work.
Treat standard and senior designers as typically exempt and junior production roles with more care. For the underlying rules, the exempt vs non-exempt guide and the Fair Labor Standards Act guide explain the tests. This is general information, not legal advice; confirm with an employment attorney.
Instructional Designer Pay
Pay depends on seniority, industry, and region, and two federal occupations bracket the role.
Junior and associate designers sit toward the lower end, while senior, lead, and specialized designers earn more, and some industries pay above the median. Freelance designers are usually paid per project or hourly. Set your range using the proxy closest to your role and current local market data.
Hiring an Instructional Designer
A large enterprise has an L&D department and the volume to keep a full-time designer busy. A smaller company hiring its first learning role has to decide whether it even needs a full-time designer, how to classify the role, and where the work will live. Here are the three realities that matter most.
After You Hire: Onboarding an Instructional Designer
Once you have chosen the person or contractor, onboarding centers on the platform, access, and priorities, plus the right paperwork. For an employee, send the offer letter with the classification and pay, collect the signed offer, and complete Form I-9 and tax forms as part of the new hire paperwork. For a contractor, use a written agreement with scope, rate, and IP assignment.
Then set them up to do the work: the learning platform where content will live, access to subject-matter experts and existing materials, and a clear first priority. Keep signed onboarding documents in one place, and the offer letter template covers the terms, with the onboarding checklist giving you a repeatable process.
FirstHR fits this hire directly: its built-in training modules give a new designer or contractor a ready platform to build onboarding and training content in, alongside e-signature for the offer or contractor agreement, document management for signed paperwork and IP assignment, onboarding task workflows and an AI onboarding wizard, and an HRIS with employee profiles and an org chart. Because pricing is flat rather than per seat, growing your team and learner base does not raise the cost. FirstHR does not run payroll or provide legal advice, and is not a full enterprise authoring suite, so pair it with your payroll provider, any specialist tools, and an attorney as needed. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does an instructional designer do?
An instructional designer creates effective learning experiences: they analyze what learners need, work with subject-matter experts, write learning objectives, and design and build courses, e-learning, and training materials that help people acquire and apply new skills. The day-to-day work typically includes conducting needs analysis, building storyboards, developing content in authoring tools, creating assessments, applying instructional-design models such as ADDIE, ensuring content is accessible, and evaluating whether the learning actually worked. The role sits within learning and development, and the term instructional design refers to the discipline while instructional designer refers to the person who practices it. In federal data the role maps most closely to instructional coordinators (SOC 25-9031), though corporate instructional designers also overlap heavily with training and development specialists (SOC 13-1151), which is the faster-growing category. Related titles include learning experience designer, instructional design specialist, and e-learning developer, which is more production-focused. The templates on this page cover the main versions, standard, senior, junior, specialist, and freelance, so the description matches the exact role and level you are hiring.
Does a small business need a full-time instructional designer?
Usually not, at least not as a full-time employee. A dedicated, full-time instructional designer typically becomes justifiable at scale, commonly hundreds of employees, or when a company has continuous compliance and regulatory training obligations, or when learning content is the company's actual product, as with an EdTech or training business. Below that point, most growing companies meet their training needs in one of two ways. They hire a generalist, often a people-operations or HR person who owns onboarding and training using off-the-shelf tools, or they contract a freelance instructional designer for specific projects, which is far more cost-effective for occasional needs. Smaller organizations actually tend to spend more per employee on learning, but they deliver it through tools and outsourcing rather than dedicated headcount. So before posting a full-time role, ask honestly whether your volume of learning content justifies a salary. If it does not yet, a freelance designer or a training-coordinator role owned by a generalist will usually serve you better, and this page includes a freelance scope-of-work template for exactly that path.
What is the difference between instructional design and instructional designer?
The two terms refer to the same field from different angles. Instructional design is the discipline, the systematic practice of analyzing learning needs and designing experiences that help people learn, often using models like ADDIE or SAM. An instructional designer is the professional who does that work. In practice, searches for instructional design job description and instructional designer job description are looking for the same thing: how to describe and hire for this role. So this page serves both, using instructional designer as the primary framing since that is the job title you would post. The discipline also spans a few related titles. A learning experience designer (LXD) blends instructional design with user-experience thinking and is often functionally similar. An instructional design specialist is a near-synonym, sometimes with added learning-platform administration duties. An e-learning developer is more production-focused, building courses in authoring tools from a designer's storyboard. For most hires, instructional designer is the right title, and the templates here cover its main variations and seniority levels.
Is an instructional designer exempt or non-exempt under the FLSA?
An instructional designer is usually exempt, but it depends on the actual duties and salary. The relevant exemption is the learned-professional exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which applies when the role requires advanced knowledge in a field of learning, customarily acquired through prolonged specialized instruction, and the employee is paid on a salary basis of at least $684 per week. A standard, degreed instructional-design role typically meets this, so most instructional designers are exempt. The caveat that catches employers out is that the exemption is duties- and salary-based, not title-based. A junior or production-focused role that mainly involves operating authoring tools to assemble content from someone else's design, rather than exercising independent professional judgment, may not meet the learned-professional standard, and any role paid below the salary threshold is non-exempt regardless of duties. So a standard or senior instructional designer usually classifies as exempt, while a junior production role or entry-level e-learning builder may be non-exempt and overtime-eligible. Classify by the real duties and pay, and confirm close calls with employment counsel.
How much does an instructional designer make?
Pay depends on seniority, industry, and region. In federal data, the closest official occupation is instructional coordinators (SOC 25-9031), with a median annual wage of $74,720 in May 2024, ranging from under $46,560 at the 10th percentile to over $115,410 at the 90th. Corporate instructional designers also overlap with training and development specialists (SOC 13-1151), which had a median of $65,850 and is growing much faster. Together these bracket the role, with most corporate instructional designers landing somewhere in the roughly $62,000 to $100,000-plus range depending on experience and sector. Junior and associate designers sit toward the lower end, while senior, lead, and specialized designers earn more, and certain industries like technology and healthcare tend to pay above the median. If you are contracting rather than hiring, freelance instructional designers are typically paid per project or hourly, with rates varying widely by experience. Use the proxy occupation closest to your role and current local market data for your specific level, industry, and region.
What skills and qualifications should an instructional designer have?
Most instructional-designer roles call for a mix of design knowledge, tool skills, and collaboration ability, anchored by a portfolio that demonstrates real work. On knowledge, look for familiarity with instructional-design models such as ADDIE or SAM, the ability to write clear learning objectives, and an understanding of how adults learn. On tools, look for experience with e-learning authoring tools and, often, a learning platform or LMS, plus awareness of standards like SCORM or xAPI and accessibility requirements such as Section 508 and WCAG for compliance-driven content. On collaboration, the role depends on working well with subject-matter experts and managing projects to deadlines. A bachelor's degree in instructional design, education, or a related field is commonly required, and a master's is often preferred for senior roles, but a strong portfolio is increasingly the most decisive factor, sometimes more than the degree. For mid-level roles, two to five years of experience is typical. Match the requirements to your seniority level and separate true must-haves from preferences so you do not narrow your candidate pool unnecessarily.
What should an instructional designer job description include?
A strong instructional-designer job description includes a short company summary, the core responsibilities, the qualifications anchored by a portfolio, the reporting line, and the compensation, all matched to the seniority level you need. For responsibilities, focus on the real work: needs analysis, writing learning objectives, designing and building e-learning and other content, collaborating with subject-matter experts, applying design models, ensuring accessibility, and evaluating effectiveness. Two things most templates skip but that matter: address the FLSA classification, since the role is usually exempt but junior or production-heavy versions may not be, and, for compliance-driven content, name the standards you need such as Section 508 and WCAG accessibility and SCORM or xAPI for your learning platform. Be clear about whether you are hiring a full-time employee or contracting a freelancer, since that changes the terms entirely. Asking for a portfolio is essential. The templates on this page give you a role-matched, fill-in-the-blank starting point across standard, senior, junior, specialist, and freelance versions, with the FLSA, accessibility, and contract-versus-hire guidance that generic templates leave out.
What happens after I hire an instructional designer?
An instructional designer or training contractor is only as effective as the system they build and deliver content in, so onboarding centers on giving them that platform plus the usual paperwork. Start with the basics: for an employee, the offer letter with the classification and pay, the signed offer, and Form I-9 and tax forms; for a contractor, a written agreement with scope, rate, and an intellectual-property assignment, since created learning content should be owned by the company in writing. Then set them up with the learning platform where content will live, access to subject-matter experts and existing materials, and a clear picture of the first priorities. For a smaller company, a single training platform usually beats a complex toolchain. FirstHR fits here directly: its built-in training modules give a new designer or contractor a ready place to build and deliver onboarding and training content, alongside e-signature for the offer or contractor agreement, document management for signed paperwork and IP assignment, onboarding workflows and an AI onboarding wizard, and an HRIS with employee profiles. Pricing is flat rather than per seat. FirstHR does not run payroll or provide legal advice, so pair it with your payroll provider and an attorney as needed. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.