Professional Learning Manager, Facilitator Onboarding

The Purpose of Zearn

Zearn is the nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to inspire all kids to love learning math. Everything we do is driven by our belief that every kid is a math kid.

Our top-rated learning platform is designed to catch kids up and move them forward in grade-level math. And it works. Large-scale efficacy research shows students who use Zearn make significant gains in math proficiency, including the students who start multiple grade levels behind.

As a nonprofit, all of our work is driven by what is best for kids. At the same time, we operate as an intense and fast-moving technology company, inclusively solving hard problems that will impact current and future generations. The problems we solve require expertise in teaching, learning science, software development, design, video production, and countless other disciplines. As an organization that is always stretching to get to the next level of impact, every single person owns mission critical work.

If you’re ready to join our Team of problem solvers, and own work that will drive us to achieve impact at scale, we are looking for you.

Learn more about us at https://about.zearn.org/. 

The purpose of the Professional Learning Manager, Facilitator Onboarding role at Zearn is to ensure new facilitators build the foundational skills, readiness, and independence required to deliver high quality professional learning. In this role, you will own the execution and continuous improvement of the 0 to 12 month onboarding journey, serving as the primary coach and evaluator for our newest team members. You will ensure that every facilitator who advances from onboarding is fully prepared to drive student success in the classrooms they serve. This is achieved by:

Building foundational mastery through structured coaching and modeling to ensure facilitators are ready for independent delivery.

• Manage a cohort of facilitators.
• Implement and continuously improve cohort-based onboarding experiences, including bootcamps, practice cycles, and co-facilitation sequences.
• Run structured foundational coaching cycles aligned to  our Criteria for Success to bridge skill gaps early.
• Model strong facilitation and co-facilitate with new hires, providing a clear "north star" for what excellence looks like in practice.
• Conduct structured observations and debriefs that focus on core facilitation skills, preparation routines, and delivery consistency.

Managing the transition to independence to maintain high standards of quality across the Professional Learning team.

• Conduct readiness observations and synthesize evidence to make clear recommendations regarding facilitator independence.
• Calibrate readiness decisions with the Director of Professional Learning to ensure a unified standard of excellence.
• Adapt materials from the Professional Learning Content team’s rollout of training sessions to ensure new facilitators deeply internalize and accurately deliver existing content.
• Own the collection of readiness evidence and transition documentation to ensure a seamless move into State Support.

Using data and insights to refine the onboarding journey and support the growth of the facilitator pool.

• Track facilitator growth using observation data, survey feedback, and internalization artifacts to identify trends in the onboarding cohort.
• Maintain accurate progress records that support data driven readiness recommendations.
• Participate in facilitator hiring and selection as a subject matter expert, providing feedback on candidate skill and potential.
• Refine preparation protocols and internalization cycles to help facilitators build independence in their own planning routines.

The Next Problems for this Role to Solve

• How might we accelerate the "Speed to Readiness" for new facilitators without compromising our bar for quality?
• What innovative coaching routines could we implement to help facilitators internalize complex content more deeply during their first 90 days?
• How might we improve our readiness documentation to make calibration conversations with leadership more efficient and data driven?
• What methods can we use to better predict a candidate's "readiness potential" during the hiring process?

Skills You Bring to the Table

• Master Facilitator: You have a deep understanding of what makes professional learning "click" for adults. You can model excellence in the moment and break down complex facilitation moves into learnable steps.
• Insightful Coach: You don't just see what is happening; you see why it i