Chief Research and Design Officer - Leading Educators

Organization:
Leading Educators. Role:
Chief Research and Design Officer.

Location:

Remote. Travel expectations:
Frequent Travel. Salary range: $203,557-$292,923.

At Leading Educators (LE), we know that excellent teaching is the most important driver of student success. The moment a student steps foot in the classroom, their opportunity to learn depends on how prepared their teacher is to translate complex content knowledge, standards, and their knowledge of that student into lessons that help them learn deeply and apply their thinking to the real world.

That’s a big lift, and it often happens alone. As a national nonprofit, we partner with school systems to overcome persistent instructional challenges, foster intentional collaboration and adult learning by design, and ignite new possibilities through systemic solutions at the intersection of teaching, talent, and technology.

We work shoulder‑to‑shoulder with educators at every level of the education system to strengthen their instructional and leadership practices, bring a vision for excellent instruction to life with consistency, and ensure every student reaches their full potential. Through direct support, strategic advising, innovation pilots, and best‑in‑class research, we help educators work toward a future where every student is ready to thrive.

The Chief Research and Design Officer (CRDO) is a pivotal executive role charged with shaping the future of Leading Educators’ impact - and, more broadly, contributing to how the field defines and delivers excellent content instruction s leader will set the organization’s research and learning agenda, translate insight into innovation, and bring new services and products to market that meaningfully improve teaching and learning for students nationwide.

The CRDO sits at the center of possibility: identifying what is emerging, determining what is worth scaling, and ensuring that our most promising ideas and new models - in areas like the science of reading, high quality instructional materials, and the supporting tech stack, mathematics, or AI‑enabled instruction - become practical, powerful solutions for school systems and states.

As a member of Leading Educators’ Leadership Team, the CRDO is both a strategic architect and a builder - shaping organizational direction while ensuring that our innovations lead to measurable, scaled impact, sustainable growth, and lasting change in schools and systems.

• Designing What’s Next – and Bringing It to Scale.
• Defining What We Learn – and Why It Matters.
• Turning Insight into Action Across the Organization.

Designing What’s Next and Bringing It to Scale

• Opportunity Identification & Strategy
  • Identify high‑leverage opportunities for new services aligned to organizational strategy and market demand.
  • Translate insights from research, partners, and field trends into bold, actionable service concepts.
  • Prioritize a pipeline of new service ideas based on impact, feasibility, and revenue potential.
• Service or Product Design, Development, Validation
  • Lead end‑to‑end design of new services (from concept to detailed model) and/or define the conditions in which a promising new model or field innovation is ready to scale.
  • Define target users, value proposition, core components, and delivery model.
  • Build prototypes, playbooks, and initial tools/materials.
  • Ensure designs are grounded in evidence, user needs, and practical implementation realities.
  • If needed, design and oversee pilots to test services in real settings.
  • Establish success metrics (cost, scalability, usability, and impact).
  • Rapidly iterate based on data, feedback, and outcomes.
  • Make decisive calls - scaling what works, refining what shows promise, and stopping what doesn’t.
• Scaling and Replication of New Services or Products
  • Translate successful pilots into scalable, repeatable models.
  • Develop implementation playbooks, training, and support structures.
  • Define what must be standardized vs. customized.
  • Partner with the Growth and Program Teams to operationalize and expand services across sites.
  • Build organizational learning loops (what’s working, what’s not, why).
  • Coach teams on…