What Does an Instructional Designer Do in 2026?
By Devlin Peck · Updated
Part of the Become an Instructional Designer guide
Instructional designers analyze what people need to learn, then design and build the training that gets them there: eLearning courses, simulations, job aids, and instructor-led programs. They usually work behind the scenes rather than delivering the training themselves.
I've worked in instructional design since 2017, including a few years freelancing for clients like GitLab, Robinhood, and IHG, and the job looks meaningfully different in 2026 than it did even three years ago. This article covers what the role involves day to day, where the jobs are, what they pay, and how AI is reshaping the work. If you already know you want in, my step-by-step guide to becoming an instructional designer walks the entire path.
What does an instructional designer do?
Instructional designers figure out what people need to learn, then design and develop the learning experiences that close the gap. That covers eLearning courses, instructor-led programs, simulations, videos, and performance support tools, and it almost always happens behind the scenes: someone else typically delivers the training.
The core responsibilities show up in nearly every ID job description:
- Needs analysis: talking with stakeholders to pin down the actual performance problem before building anything
- Subject matter expert (SME) interviews: extracting knowledge from the people who do the job well
- Writing and storyboarding: turning raw content into structured scripts, outlines, and storyboards
- Development: building the final product in authoring tools, or increasingly with AI-assisted workflows
- Assessment and evaluation: writing assessments and checking whether the training actually changed performance
Instructional design itself is the discipline behind all of this. It draws on learning science, design, psychology, and creative writing to make learning experiences effective rather than merely attractive. If you want to learn more about the discipline rather than the job itself, start with what instructional design is.
What does a typical day look like for an instructional designer?
A typical day includes meetings with SMEs and business stakeholders, focused design and development blocks, review cycles, and, increasingly in 2026, AI-assisted drafting and output review. No two settings look identical, so let me show you two real pictures.
Earlier in my career, when I freelanced full time for eLearning agencies and Fortune 500 clients, my day usually ran like this:
- 10:00 to 10:30 am: check email, respond to client questions, follow up with potential leads
- 10:30 am to 1:00 pm: heads-down work on client projects
- 1:00 to 2:00 pm: lunch
- 2:00 to 3:00 pm: research trends, try new tools, engage in community spaces
- 3:00 to 6:00 pm: write articles, record YouTube videos, or update my portfolio for business development
Notice how much of a freelancer's day is not design work. Business development mattered as much as the client projects did.
Corporate ID workloads in 2026 vary quite a bit. Some corporate IDs build learning experiences from custom code with AI coding tools, while others build eLearning in traditional tools like Articulate Storyline 360. The common ground across most corporate weeks looks like this: reviewing training intake forms, getting on calls with business stakeholders, emailing and meeting with subject matter experts, reviewing SME materials, drafting storyboards, scripts, and content, developing the eLearning itself, and reviewing data to decide the best next steps with the team.
The mix shifts with seniority, too. Junior IDs spend more time building; senior IDs spend more time in analysis, stakeholder conversations, and measurement.
How is AI changing the instructional designer role?
AI is absorbing production tasks like first drafts, storyboards, and assessment items, and pushing instructional designers to higher level skills like analysis, learning strategy, and performance measurement. It is changing the job (definitely not eliminating it).
The adoption numbers back this up. Synthesia's State of Instructional Design survey found that 84% of surveyed instructional designers had tried ChatGPT, and 57% named it their most-used AI tool. Dr. Philippa Hardman's State of Instructional Design research describes success metrics shifting away from completion rates and toward on-the-job performance impact. And the Online Learning Consortium's Voices from the Field 2025 report puts AI at the top of the trends shaping the field.
Here's what that shift looks like in my own work as of 2026. The task that has effectively disappeared from my workflow is hands-on building in eLearning authoring tools. I don't really spend time in them anymore; I build directly with AI agents in Claude Code, often running several sessions in parallel. My old process was: talk to stakeholders, write the storyboard and outline myself, gather feedback, build a prototype, gather more feedback, then develop the final product. Now I talk to stakeholders, feed the transcripts, notes, and materials to AI agents, review a high-fidelity prototype with the SME, and feed that feedback back into the AI. Rinse and repeat.
Instead of doing the building, I'm reviewing and steering.Devlin Peck
That reviewing-and-steering work is the task that has grown and will continue to grow. Judgment is the job now: knowing what good looks like, catching what the AI got wrong, and deciding what happens next.
For anyone entering the field, three skill expectations are new since the last time I updated this article: AI-assisted development and prompting, interpreting learner data, and designing AI-powered practice. That last one is a new deliverable type that wasn't possible pre-AI. Teams increasingly want learners to rehearse real conversations (sales calls, coaching sessions, difficult feedback) with an AI character rather than clicking through static branching scenarios or relying on trainers with busy schedules. Disclosure: this is the problem my company devlin.ai works on. You describe a scenario in plain English and get a working voice or text simulation that embeds in Storyline, Rise, or any LMS, with AI scoring and transcripts reporting back to the course. The Starter plan for aspiring IDs and portfolio-builders runs $9 per month.
Where do instructional designers work?
Most instructional designers work in corporate L&D teams, with the rest spread across higher education, government, healthcare, nonprofits, and vendor or freelance roles. Corporate roles pay the most on average.
The market is large and growing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 452,300 training and development specialist jobs in the US in 2024, projects 11% growth from 2024 to 2034 (much faster than average), and estimates about 43,900 openings per year over the decade.
Here's how the main settings compare, with average US salaries from Devlin Peck's Instructional Designer Salary Survey:
| Work setting | What the work looks like | Average US salary |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate | Interactive eLearning, compliance and skills training, performance support at company scale | $87,384 |
| Government | Similar to corporate; scope depends on the agency's mission, often with stricter requirements | $84,095 |
| Healthcare | Clinical and compliance training, patient-facing education, high-stakes procedural content | $83,092 |
| Nonprofit | Broad generalist work, often smaller teams and budgets with wider responsibilities | $76,335 |
| Higher education | Helping faculty design and maintain online courses, supporting the LMS | $68,474 |
One more distinction worth knowing: in-house versus vendor. Instructional designers at external vendors often have differentiated roles. A performance consultant runs the analysis, the instructional designer designs the course, and an eLearning developer converts it into the interactive final product. In-house IDs support their own company's employees or customers and are far more likely to do all of those jobs themselves.
Not sure which setting fits you? This matcher ranks the five settings above against your background and priorities:
Answer five quick questions and I will rank the five work settings from this article for you. You get an honest rationale for each one, plus the average salary from my industry survey.
What skills do instructional designers need?
Instructional designers need three skill buckets: learning science fundamentals, development tools, and consulting-grade soft skills. The theory tells you what to build, the tools let you build it, and the soft skills get it approved and adopted.
On the theory side, four frameworks come up constantly. ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) is the best-known model of the end-to-end ID process, and its biggest lesson is that analysis comes before building. Bloom's Taxonomy organizes cognitive skills from simple recall up to complex application, which is what guides how you write learning objectives. Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction gives you a sequence for structuring a complete learning experience, from gaining attention to supporting transfer. And Mayer's principles of multimedia learning are research-backed rules for combining words and visuals without overloading learners.
I cover these models, plus the learning theories that justify them, in this video:
On the tools side, Storyline 360 remains the most requested authoring tool in job postings, and LMS familiarity is a near-universal expectation. As covered in the AI section above, AI-assisted development now belongs on this list, too. Hiring managers also consistently look for visual design fundamentals and project management.
The soft skills are what separate good IDs from replaceable ones: communication, storytelling, complex problem-solving, and the ability to push back on stakeholders who ask for a course when the real problem is something else. For the full breakdown of what to learn and in what order, see this complete list of instructional design skills.
What qualifications do you need to be an instructional designer?
There is no required degree. Corporate employers hire primarily on portfolio and demonstrated skills, while higher education and government roles more often require a master's.
Your options break down into three paths: a formal degree, self-directed courses, or a structured program. Degrees carry the most weight in higher ed and government. For corporate roles, targeted instructional design courses plus a strong portfolio routinely beat credentials alone.
If you want structure and support rather than piecing the transition together yourself, that's what my school Peck Academy exists for. It's a licensed career school where the training covers foundational ID theory, Storyline 360, and AI skills: students build an AI-integrated flagship project in Storyline 360 with extensive feedback, plus a portfolio website, then work with a career support specialist on resume, LinkedIn, and interviewing. An advisory committee of 10 independent industry experts reviews the curriculum to keep it current.
How much do instructional designers make?
Full-time instructional designers in the US average $83,347 per year according to Devlin Peck's Instructional Designer Salary Survey, with corporate roles averaging $87,384 and about 20% of US respondents earning $100,000 or more.
Experience moves the number substantially:
| Experience level | Average US salary (full-time) |
|---|---|
| 0 to 3 years | $77,856 |
| 4 to 8 years | $87,809 |
| 9 to 15 years | $93,046 |
| 16 to 20 years | $108,214 |
Employment type matters too. Employees earn a salary, while freelancers and consultants charge by the project or by the hour, so their income varies far more with their client pipeline.
As an external benchmark, the BLS reports a median of $65,850 for training and development specialists as of May 2024. The survey figure runs higher partly because the BLS category covers a broader mix of roles and titles than "instructional designer" alone. For figures by industry, location, gender, and more, see the full instructional designer salary report.
Instructional designer vs eLearning developer vs LXD: what's the difference?
The short version: instructional designers own the analysis, design, and writing; eLearning developers build the interactive final product; and learning experience designers do largely the same work as IDs with a heavier emphasis on user experience.
In practice, the ID and developer roles are split at vendors and large teams but combined into one job almost everywhere else, which is why most ID postings expect authoring-tool skills. The instructional designer vs eLearning developer breakdown covers where the line falls and which side pays what.
Learning experience design (LXD) borrows framing from UX: design thinking, learner journeys, iteration. The day-to-day work overlaps heavily with instructional design, and many companies use the titles interchangeably. Here's how learning experience design compares with instructional design in detail.
My advice on which title to use when applying: default to calling yourself an instructional designer, because it's the better-known term. Title yourself Learning Experience Designer on your resume when that's the title of the specific role you're applying for. Always customize your resume for the role.
Is instructional design a good career?
Yes, for most people who enjoy design work without classroom delivery. Demand is projected to grow 11% through 2034 according to the BLS, pay is solid, and remote work is common. But it's a behind-the-scenes, stakeholder-heavy job, and you should know that going in.
The people who thrive tend to enjoy helping others learn without needing to be in front of the room, they like working with technology, and they don't mind that most projects serve adults in corporate settings. The people who struggle usually miss direct learner interaction or underestimate how much of the job is meetings, reviews, and stakeholder management. I walk through the full fit-check in this video:
How do you become an instructional designer?
The compressed version: learn the theory, learn the tools, build a portfolio that proves you can do the work, and then apply strategically.
Learn the instructional design fundamentals
Study the core models and theories (ADDIE, Gagne, Bloom, Mayer) so you can explain not just what you'd build, but why.
Learn the development tools
Get hands-on with Storyline 360 and at least one AI-assisted workflow. Most ID roles expect you to design and build.
Build a portfolio
Employers hire on proof. A few polished projects on a simple portfolio site beat any credential in the corporate market.
Apply strategically
Tailor your resume to each role, optimize your LinkedIn profile, network with other IDs, and prepare for interview questions about your process and skills. For a deeper look at where to search and how to land interviews, see how to find instructional design jobs.
Each of those steps gets its own detailed chapter in the full roadmap for breaking into the field.
Next steps
You now know what instructional designers do, where they work, what they earn, and how AI is changing the job. If the work sounds like your kind of work, the step-by-step guide linked above is the place to start.