Director, Learning Design & Development

Isaac Operations•Toronto, ON

2d•CA$165,000 - CA$195,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Isaac is scaling fast, and we are building a Learning & Development function that can scale with us. One that is deliberate, distinctive, and grounded in who we are. We are looking for a Director, Learning Design & Development to come in and shape how we develop our people. This is a build role, not a maintain role. You will own the end-to-end arc of how people learn at Isaac, from what we teach, to how we teach it, to how our leaders develop their teams day-to-day. You will be the senior leader on how we develop our people at Isaac. While we have a flexible working environment, the successful candidate should expect to spend an average of at least three days a week in person at our Liberty Village office.

Requirements

A builder, not a maintainer. Energized by shaping something distinctive from the ground up, not running someone else’s playbook
A bridge between the business and the people side. You read what the business actually needs, you read what people want to develop, and you find solutions that serve both
Develops others as a default. You coach as much as you direct, you raise the bar for the people around you, and you make other people better at their jobs
Opinionated about how learning works. You hold strong views on what good development looks like and you’re willing to defend them, including with senior people who disagree
Senior in presence. You belong in rooms with Partners and VPs, and you bring conviction without ego
Comfortable being the only senior learning person in the room and equally comfortable working in partnership with peers who own adjacent scopes
Curious and intellectually restless. You read, you think, you bring fresh ideas into the room without chasing every trend
Patient with people, impatient with mediocre work. You don’t confuse being kind with lowering the bar
Pragmatic. You can hold an ambitious vision and ship a useful first version of it in the same week
You bring energy, curiosity, and personality to your work.
Deep expertise in organizational learning. You understand how adults actually develop in professional services and how to design for it, not from a generalist L&D playbook
Formal grounding in learning science, instructional design, organizational psychology, adult development, or a related discipline. Either through academic training or through significant practitioner work that put you in regular contact with the underlying research
Significant experience leading the learning and development function inside a serious organization (corporate, professional services, or a respected scale-up) at a level that owned the design of how people develop, not just the delivery of training
A track record of leadership development programs you’ve designed that demonstrably shifted behaviour, with evidence you can talk to (manager feedback signals, leader effectiveness measures, retention outcomes, or equivalent)
Experience operating alongside senior business leaders as a peer, not a service provider. Credible in strategic conversations and used to being challenged on your recommendations
Hands-on experience building from scratch. Competency frameworks, faculty models, measurement approaches, content libraries. You have artefacts you can show, not just programs you’ve run
Practical experience with the full blended-learning palette (live training, self-paced digital, coaching, mentoring, on-the-job learning) and a point of view on how they fit together
A formed view on AI in development, ideally with a project or two you’ve shipped that tested it in practice
Strong written and verbal communication. Your decks, your frameworks, and your sessions all carry the same high standard

Responsibilities

Own what great learning looks like at Isaac across the full breadth of how people develop. Live training, self-paced content, coaching and mentoring, on-the-job learning, and how they fit together
Make development and learning at Isaac feel special. Not just effective, but a defining part of our culture, the reason people stay, the reason candidates want to join, and a differentiator our clients experience through the quality of our people
Design an integrated development ecosystem where on-the-job experiences, formal learning, coaching, mentoring, talent assessments, and career development work together to accelerate growth.
Lead the design and build of Isaac’s Leadership Academy, a multi-level program supported by external partners that advances people’s leadership skills from early career through to Partner, with a clear, credible development arc at every level to meet business needs today and build the capabilities we'll need in the future
Own the technical operational training by level from induction (new consultant training) through to Principal and evolve the content as our work and sectors evolve
Own the manager capability agenda. Define explicit expectations for development conversations, feedback, and how managers grow the people on their teams, and embed those expectations in how leaders operate
Shape the leadership capability definition and the leadership metrics that signal whether the system is working
Partner with senior leaders to translate our existing competency framework into behaviour descriptors, learning experiences, and development reps that actually shift how people show up
Bring an external, evidence-based view of organizational learning into Isaac. What’s working in serious learning organizations, what’s noise, and what fits our culture
Explore and introduce innovative approaches to learning, leveraging new technologies, AI, and emerging practices to create engaging development experiences that set Isaac apart.
Engage external partners and academic faculty where they raise the ceiling, and build internal facilitation capability over time so leaders are teaching leaders
Lead and develop the L&D team. Build a strong group around you across systems and execution, leadership development specialists, and FO Sector Dev Leads, and raise the bar for the whole function
Operate as a senior member of the People Team leadership group. Voice in strategy, partner to the VP P&C, and contributor to how Isaac scales its people overall