Senior Director, Research-Skills Center

About ETS

ETS is a global education and talent solutions organization enabling lifelong learners worldwide to be future‑ready. For more than 75 years we’ve been advancing the science of measurement to build benchmarks for fair and valid skill assessment across cultures and borders. Our worldwide impact extends through our renowned assessments, including TOEFL®, TOEIC®, GRE®, and Praxis® tests, serving millions of learners in more than 200 countries and territories.

Through strategic acquisitions we’ve expanded our global capabilities: PSI strengthens our workforce assessment solutions, while Edusoft, Kira Talent, Pipplet, Vericant, and Wheebox enhance our educational technology and assessment platforms across critical markets worldwide.

Through ETS Research Institute and ETS Solutions we partner with educational institutions, governments, and organizations globally to promote skill proficiency, empower upward mobility, and unlock opportunities for everyone, everywhere. With offices and partners across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, we deliver nearly 50 million tests annually. Join us in our journey of measuring progress to power human progress worldwide.

The Senior Director serves as the founding leader of the Skills Center and is accountable for setting the scientific vision, building organizational capacity, and securing external funding to advance ETS’s leadership in the research and assessment of complex and durable skills across education and workforce contexts.

Reporting into ETS Research leadership, the role provides enterprise‑level leadership in:

• Defining and executing a forward‑looking research agenda for skills.
• Building and leading a high‑performing, multidisciplinary research organization.
• Expanding ETS’s impact through strategic partnerships, funding, and national and global visibility.

The Senior Director ensures that the Skills Center’s work is scientifically rigorous, mission‑aligned, and tightly connected to ETS’s broader research, product, and policy priorities.

• Define and lead a forward‑looking vision and multi‑year research agenda for complex and durable skills that positions ETS as a national and global thought leader.
• Oversee the development of core scientific foundations for skills assessment, including construct frameworks, learning progressions, evidence models, and innovative assessment and measurement approaches.
• Identify and lead opportunities at the intersection of skills, AI‑enabled assessment, STEM integration, and multimodal evidence ecosystems.

• Build, lead, and mentor a high‑performing, interdisciplinary research team, fostering a culture of scientific excellence, collaboration, and innovation.
• Provide direction, oversight, and quality assurance for the Skills Center research portfolio, ensuring rigor, coherence, and impact across projects.
• Ensure strategic alignment of Skills Center initiatives with ETS’s research priorities, mission, and business strategy.

• Serve as the primary driver of external funding growth for the Skills Center, developing and executing a strategic fundraising plan in partnership with ETS leadership and development teams.
• Secure research investments from federal agencies, philanthropic foundations, state partners, and private‑sector collaborators.
• Build and sustain strategic partnerships with states, districts, research institutes, employers, and workforce organizations to promote system‑level integration of skills research and assessment.

• Represent ETS and the Skills Center in national and global forums, initiatives, and policy‑relevant conversations related to skills‑based learning and assessment.
• Oversee the development of influential research outputs, reports, and thought leadership that communicate the Center’s vision, findings, and impact to research, policy, and practitioner audiences.

• Ph.D. in educational psychology, industrial–organizational psychology, learning sciences, quantitative psychology, measurement, or a closely related field…