Learning and Development Specialist Job Description

A Learning and Development Specialist is the person an organization calls when its people need to learn something new and the old way of teaching it is not working. The request might be onboarding for new hires, a required compliance course, a leadership program for first-time supervisors, or training for a software system the institution just bought. The specialist's job is to work out what people actually need to do differently, then build and run the learning that gets them there.

In the education industry, that employer is often a college or university, where the job may sit in human resources or a talent development office and serve faculty and staff. School systems run staff development teams of their own, and private training companies build and sell programs to other organizations. The University of Florida's classification for a Learning & Organizational Development Specialist II gives a sense of the campus version: it covers the design, development, and facilitation of leadership and management development programs, and it also asks the holder to act as an internal organizational development consultant for departments and leaders across campus.

The work follows a cycle. It starts with analysis: interviewing the manager who asked for training, talking to the people who do the job well, and looking at the data. Sometimes the answer is that training will not help, because the real problem is a broken process, a confusing form or an unclear policy, and saying so is part of the job. When training is the answer, the specialist writes objectives, decides on the format (live workshop, self-paced eLearning, printed job aid, manager coaching guide or some blend), and drafts the materials.

Building is hands-on. Specialists script and storyboard modules, record narration, assemble interactions in an authoring tool, and publish the result to the learning management system. O*NET's technology list for the occupation includes learning management system software and Moodle. Accessibility is part of the build, not an afterthought: captions on video, alt text on images, tagged PDFs and navigation that works without a mouse.

Delivery means facilitation. A specialist may run a new-employee orientation in the morning and a virtual workshop for department chairs in the afternoon, and the skill there is reading the group, managing the skeptics and keeping practice tied to real tasks. Administration fills the gaps: enrollments, completion reports for compliance offices, and fixing the course that will not launch on someone's browser.

Evaluation closes the loop. Completion counts are easy to pull. Showing that a supervisor program changed how supervisors handle a grievance, or that a new-system course cut help-desk tickets, takes planning before launch and access to data owned by other offices.

Education. As a rough guide, the path into this work runs through a bachelor's degree in education, instructional design, educational technology, human resources, organizational psychology or a field tied to the content being taught, such as nursing or information technology. A master's in instructional design, learning sciences or adult education is one route for people who want to move toward design leadership or a university setting. The University of Florida's Learning & Organizational Development Specialist II classification asks for a master's degree in an appropriate area and two years of relevant experience, or a bachelor's degree in an appropriate area and four years of relevant experience; treat that as one employer's example, not a national rule.

Experience. People arrive from adjacent work: classroom teaching, academic advising, HR generalist roles, or a frontline job where they became the person who trained everyone else. As a rough guide, two to four years of related experience plus a portfolio is a realistic starting point for a specialist title, with senior roles typically asking for more.

Credentials. The talent development credentials to know are the Associate Professional in Talent Development (APTD) and the Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTD), both awarded by the ATD Certification Institute. For roles embedded in human resources, the SHRM Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) from the Society for Human Resource Management is another option. Vendor training for a specific LMS or authoring tool can help on a team that runs that product.

Technical skills.

• An authoring tool such as Articulate Storyline or Rise, or Adobe Captivate, plus basic video and audio editing
• LMS administration: course setup, enrollment rules, SCORM and xAPI packages, completion reports
• Accessibility practice: WCAG 2.1 Level AA, captioning, alt text, accessible PDFs and slide decks
• Survey and assessment tools for collecting learner feedback and test results
• Spreadsheet skills for cleaning and summarizing learning data

Design frameworks. Expect questions about ADDIE, iterative models such as SAM, Kirkpatrick's levels of evaluation, Bloom's taxonomy for objective writing and adult learning principles. Be ready to show where each one changed a project, not just name it.

What separates strong candidates. A consulting habit, meaning the ability to turn "we need a training" into a question about performance; the confidence to facilitate in front of senior faculty or executives; and the project discipline to keep several courses moving through subject matter expert review at once. In a portfolio, show the problem, the design decision and the result, not only the finished screens.

The federal projection is strong. BLS projects employment of training and development specialists to grow 11 percent from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all occupations. Education appears on BLS's list of the largest employers of the occupation: educational services (state, local and private) accounts for 11 percent of its jobs.

For specialists at public institutions, accessibility law matters. In April 2024 the Justice Department adopted a rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requiring web content and mobile apps of state and local governments, including public universities, to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. An interim final rule effective April 20, 2026 extended the compliance dates: entities with a total population of 50,000 or more moved from April 24, 2026 to April 26, 2027, and smaller entities and special district governments moved to April 26, 2028. The population count is not the enrollment. The Justice Department's guidance says a state university's population for the rule is the population of its state. That same guidance lists training staff as one of its steps toward compliance, so a learning and development specialist on a public campus may be building the accessibility training and fixing the institution's own course library at the same time.

AI is the other change, and on campuses it is landing on the people already there. EDUCAUSE ran a survey from September 29 to October 13, 2025, that produced 1,960 responses for its 2026 report, The Impact of AI on Work in Higher Education. Among respondents whose institution's work-related AI strategy includes increasing AI-related workforce skills, 69% said the institution was doing so primarily by upskilling and reskilling existing faculty and staff. Asked how, 80% said their institution was encouraging faculty and staff to develop skills on their own. For a learning and development specialist, that leaves room to add structure to self-directed learning, from short practice-based modules on approved tools to guidance on data privacy and checking output.

Pay on campus depends on the title and grade. The University of Florida's Learning & Organizational Development Specialist II sits in Pay Grade 8, with a pay range of $70,000 to $114,000. That is a single employer's published range, useful as an example rather than a benchmark for other institutions.

Career paths branch in several directions. The management track runs to training manager, director of learning and development or head of talent development, with budgets and vendor contracts attached. The design track leads to senior instructional designer and learning experience design roles. A technical track covers LMS administration, learning analytics and learning technology projects. On a campus there is a fourth option: moving into faculty development or a teaching and learning center, where the same design skills serve instructors rather than staff. Accessibility practice and evidence of measured results are useful on every one of these paths.

Dear Search Committee,

Please consider me for the Learning and Development Specialist opening in your Office of Talent Development. For the past four years I have been the training coordinator for the student services division at a regional public university, where I design and run training for advisors, financial aid counselors and front-desk staff.

When I started, new advisors learned the job by shadowing whoever had time. I interviewed our strongest advisors, sat in on appointments and pulled the most common questions from our ticketing system. The pattern was clear: new staff knew the policies but froze on the conversations, especially when a student was upset about a hold or a missed deadline. I rebuilt onboarding around short scenario practice in Articulate Storyline, paired with a live role-play session each week for the first month. Supervisors now tell me new advisors are ready to see students on their own sooner, and our escalations to the director have dropped.

Last year I took on our division's course library ahead of the accessibility deadline. I audited every module, captioned our videos, rebuilt our PDFs with proper tags and wrote a one-page checklist that other offices on campus have since borrowed. I also administer our sections of the campus LMS, including enrollment rules and the completion reports our compliance office asks for each term.

I would bring the same habits to your team: start with the problem, build only what will help, and check whether it worked. I am finishing the requirements for the APTD and would welcome the chance to talk about your plans for supervisor development and AI guidance for staff.

Sincerely, Jordan Ellis