Instructional Designer

Instructional designers build learning materials - online courses, workshops, videos, assessments, how-to guides - for people who need to learn something at work or on a course. They work out what learners actually need to be able to do, then design and build the material that gets them there, usually alongside a "subject matter expert" (the person who knows the content but isn't a teacher). You'll find them in corporate learning and development teams, universities, e-learning agencies, the NHS, government departments and ed-tech companies.

Starting salary: £25k–£32k
Live graduate jobs: 4 open now
Main way in: Direct entry into a junior or assistant instructional designer…
They usually ask for: A degree is normally expected but the subject rarely matters

Approximate graduate salary

Roughly £25,000–£32,000 to start for a junior or assistant role, though this varies widely. Higher education and charity roles tend to sit at the lower end, London corporate and ed-tech roles higher, and specialist contract or freelance rates can be considerably above salaried equivalents.

What you'd actually do

Running 'scoping' conversations with a subject matter expert - an engineer, a clinician, a compliance officer - to pull out what learners genuinely need to know, and politely cutting the two-thirds of their material that nobody needs
Writing storyboards and scripts: a document that sets out, screen by screen, what the learner sees, hears, clicks and gets wrong, which is then signed off before anything is built
Building courses in authoring tools such as Articulate Storyline or Rise, or in a learning management system (the platform that hosts courses and tracks who completed them) - this is the hands-on production part of the job
Writing quiz questions, scenario branches and knowledge checks, and arguing about whether a multiple-choice question actually tests anything useful

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Chasing stakeholders for review comments, reconciling contradictory feedback from legal, HR and the business, and version-controlling the result
Testing courses across browsers and devices, checking accessibility (screen reader compatibility, captions, colour contrast) and fixing what breaks
Looking at completion data and feedback after launch, and reworking the bits where learners drop out or consistently fail a question

How graduates get in

Direct entry into a junior or assistant instructional designer / e-learning developer post, usually with a portfolio of sample courses. This is the most common route and portfolio usually matters more than degree subject.
Sideways from teaching, training delivery, or tutoring - very common. People who have taught in schools, FE or language teaching move into corporate L&D or university learning design teams.
Via a related graduate job first: L&D coordinator or administrator, learning technologist, content writer, or a training role inside a larger graduate scheme (banking, retail, consulting), then specialising.
Graduate schemes in HR or people functions sometimes include an L&D rotation that leads here, though dedicated instructional design graduate schemes are rare.

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Through university professional services: learning technologist or digital education assistant roles in higher education, which often take recent graduates and overlap heavily with instructional design.
Freelance or agency work building courses for small clients to generate portfolio pieces - unusual as a first job but a realistic way in if you've no relevant experience.

What employers ask for

A degree is normally expected but the subject rarely matters. Education, psychology, English, communications and media are common; so are science and humanities degrees where someone has taught or written professionally.
A portfolio of two or three sample e-learning modules or learning materials. For junior roles this often counts for more than the degree, and you can build it yourself with free trials of authoring tools.
Familiarity with at least one authoring tool (Articulate Storyline or Rise, Adobe Captivate, Camtasia, Vyond and similar) and some exposure to a learning management system. Employers vary a lot in how much they expect you to arrive already knowing versus learn on the job.
Evidence you can write clearly and concisely for a non-expert reader - a writing sample, published work, or a teaching portfolio.

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Postgraduate study (MA/MSc in education, digital education, educational technology or learning design) is common in higher education roles and useful but not required in corporate settings.
Optional professional credentials: CIPD qualifications (the UK HR and L&D professional body) are valued in corporate L&D; Advance HE fellowship is relevant in universities. Neither is normally needed to get a first job.

Skills that matter

Writing plainly and ruthlessly cutting

Most source material arrives as a 60-slide deck or a policy document, and the job is turning it into something someone will actually finish.

Questioning a subject matter expert

Experts tend to describe everything they know rather than what a learner needs to do, so you have to interview them towards concrete tasks and realistic mistakes.

Hands-on tool building

In most UK jobs you design and build, so comfort with authoring software, basic audio/video editing and a bit of troubleshooting is the difference between designing a course and shipping one.

Understanding how people learn and are assessed

Knowing why spaced practice, worked examples and scenario questions work lets you justify design choices rather than just following whatever the client asked for.

Accessibility and inclusive design

Public sector and university work is held to accessibility regulations, and getting captions, keyboard navigation and contrast right is a routine part of sign-off.

Managing stakeholders and sign-off

You'll juggle competing feedback from legal, operations and senior managers while keeping a launch date, and knowing when to push back is a daily skill.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Junior / assistant instructional designer or e-learning developer: building to someone else's storyboard, fixing and updating existing courses, learning the tools.
Instructional designer or learning designer: owning projects end to end, running the scoping conversations yourself, deciding the format and approach. Most people reach this within a couple of years, though it varies a lot by employer size.
Senior instructional designer or learning experience designer: handling the complex, high-stakes programmes (regulatory, clinical, leadership), setting standards and mentoring juniors.
Branching point - typical directions are: lead/manager of a learning design team; L&D or capability manager with broader responsibility for how an organisation trains people; learning technologist or LMS/platform specialist; or ed-tech product and content roles.
Independent consultancy or freelancing is common at experienced level, as is moving into UX writing or content design, which share a lot of the same craft. Timelines here vary enormously and depend far more on sector and employer size than on years served.

What people get wrong

“It's a teaching job, so you stand up and deliver training.”

Most instructional designers rarely face a room of learners. The work is design and production at a desk - writing, storyboarding, building - and a separate trainer or facilitator often delivers anything live.

“It's purely creative - coming up with engaging ideas.”

A large part of the week is project admin: chasing reviewers, reconciling contradictory feedback, version control, testing and accessibility checks. The design thinking is real but it sits inside a production process with deadlines and sign-offs.

“You need an education degree or a teaching qualification.”

Plenty of UK instructional designers come from writing, media, psychology, science or operational backgrounds. A demonstrable portfolio and tool skills usually open more doors than the degree subject.

“It's all about making courses look slick with animation and video.”

Good instructional design often means producing less - a one-page job aid, a checklist or a redesigned process - rather than a course at all. Senior people spend a lot of time establishing whether training is even the right answer to the problem.

Where this varies

The job differs a lot by sector. In corporate L&D the work is often compliance, onboarding and systems training on tight deadlines, with a strong emphasis on building things fast in authoring tools. In higher education the equivalent roles are often titled 'learning designer' or 'learning technologist', involve supporting academics to design modules and work within virtual learning environments, and are shaped by the academic calendar. E-learning agencies are the most production-heavy - high volume, multiple clients, and you're judged on throughput and build quality. Public sector and NHS work carries heavier accessibility and governance requirements. Job titles are also inconsistent: 'learning designer', 'learning experience designer', 'digital learning developer', 'e-learning developer' and 'curriculum designer' overlap substantially, so read the duties rather than the title, and check whether a given advert expects you to build the material or only to specify it.

See all 4 live Instructional Designer jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.