Lead Instructional Designer

Role Responsibilities

The Lead Content Strategist is a senior individual contributor responsible for defining, creating, and governing high-impact written content across large-scale programs that support business performance, customer experience, and Agent enablement.

This role operates at a strategic level—setting content direction, standards, and narrative frameworks—while remaining deeply hands-on in the creation of complex, high-visibility content. Acting as a subject-matter expert in content design and storytelling, this role partners closely with stakeholders across operations, training, marketing, legal, and regional teams to ensure content is clear, consistent, compliant, and effective at scale.

Strategic Content Leadership

• Lead the end-to-end design and development of complex content programs, including enablement materials, operational communications, learning assets, and customer-facing copy.

• Define and evolve content strategy, voice, tone, and quality standards across programs to ensure consistency, clarity, and alignment with brand and business objectives.

• Serve as a senior content authority and advisor, providing strategic guidance to stakeholders on structure, messaging, and audience impact.

Senior Content Creation & Review

• Produce original, high-quality written content for multi-channel use, including digital platforms, training materials, internal communications, presentations, and program documentation.

• Rewrite, refine, or restructure content created by others to elevate quality, clarity, and effectiveness.

• Perform final-level editorial review and approval, ensuring accuracy, compliance, and readiness for deployment.

Program & Enablement Design

• Apply content design principles to create scalable, engaging, and effective learning and enablement assets.

• Lead content planning, storyboarding, and scripting for large-scale initiatives, ensuring content supports measurable business outcomes.

• Standardize content structures and frameworks to improve efficiency, reuse, and long-term maintainability.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with legal, privacy, compliance, and risk teams to ensure content meets regulatory and policy requirements.

• Collaborate with designers, trainers, SMEs, operations leaders, and regional stakeholders to translate complex concepts into clear, actionable content.

• Support presentations, executive materials, and stakeholder reviews by clearly articulating content concepts and rationale.

Quality, Analytics & Continuous Improvement

• Establish and maintain content quality benchmarks, conducting periodic audits and recommending updates based on performance, feedback, and business changes.

• Analyze content effectiveness using qualitative and quantitative inputs and recommend improvements.

Coaching & Functional Leadership

• Act as a coach and mentor to writers, instructional designers, or content contributors, providing structured feedback and modeling best practices.

• Contribute to onboarding, standards documentation, and process improvements that raise the overall maturity of content development across teams.

Role Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Communications, English, Journalism, Marketing, or related field (or equivalent experience).

• 5+ years of progressive experience in senior content creation, instructional design, or strategic writing roles.

• Demonstrated expertise in long-form and complex content development, including enablement, training, or operational communications.

• Strong command of voice, tone, editorial standards, and content governance.

• Proven ability to influence without authority and partner effectively across functions and seniority levels.

• Exceptional writing, editing, and proofreading skills.

Preferred / Advantageous

• Familiarity with learning technologies, content management systems, or LMS environments.

• Experience reviewing content for regulatory or compliance-sensitive environments.

• Ability to analyze content performance and apply insights to improve effectiveness.

Work Shift

HYBRID - Western Union values in-person collaboration, problem solving, and ideation whenever possible. We believe this fosters common ways of working and supports how we execute initiatives for our customers. The expectation is to work from the o