Learning and Development Director

About the team: 

The DHI Human Resources team strives to continuously evolve the DHI people foundation – building the talent engine, developing leaders who own outcomes, and cultivating a high-performance culture that drives DHI’s growth. You will join us in our hybrid office culture working within our Des Moines office Tuesday – Thursday.  

 About the role: 

Reporting to the Chief People Officer, you will design and deliver the DHI leadership framework, build manager and employee development programs, and architect the talent review and succession processes that ensure DHI has the right leaders in the right roles at the right time. You will also own the employee engagement strategy and performance process — the connective tissue between development, culture, and performance. This is a rare opportunity to build, not maintain, a modern L&D function inside a public company at an inflection point. 

Why we’re hiring for this role: 

DHI is hiring a Director of Learning & Development to build the leadership and talent development engine that will power our next phase of growth. This is a senior, builder-mode role created as part of the People team’s 2026 strategy. 

In this role, you will: 

This role operates with a lean budget and a broad mandate. We are looking for a leader who can prioritize and sequence work for the highest business impact. 

Core responsibilities include: 

• Design and launch DHI’s leadership framework — the behavioral and capability expectations for people managers, senior leaders, and executives in partnership with the CPO and SLT. 

• Build and deliver a tiered leadership development curriculum (new manager, experienced manager, senior leader) using a pragmatic mix of cohort programs, workshops, coaching, and on-the-job application. 

• Build a manager training program that equips DHI managers to coach, give feedback, run check-ins, and develop their teams — raising the floor and ceiling of management quality. 

• Design employee career development frameworks — career paths, growth conversations, and development planning tools — connected to DHI’s job architecture. 

• Architect and facilitate the annual talent review and succession planning process, partnering with HRBP, the CPO, and the SLT to turn reviews into real development action. 

• Own the performance check-in process — the cadence, tools, and manager enablement that ensure SMART goals, feedback, and development conversations are meaningful across DHI. 

• Serve as a thought partner to the CPO and SLT on culture, capability, and talent strategy, and partner with Communications to activate culture and engagement programs. 

• Measure what matters: define and track L&D and engagement KPIs, and report progress and ROI to executive stakeholders. 

 What you bring to the team: 

• 7+ years of progressive Learning & Development, Organization Development, or Talent Management experience, including 3+ years in a leadership role building programs at scale. 

• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree in I/O Psychology, Organizational Development, HR, Education, or related field strongly preferred. 

• Demonstrated experience designing leadership frameworks, manager development programs, and talent review/succession processes from the ground up. 

• Deep facilitation skills — you are credible and engaging in front of senior leaders, frontline managers, and everyone in between. 

• Strong analytical orientation: comfortable with engagement data, performance data, and program metrics, and able to tell a clear story with them. 

• Track record as a builder, not a maintainer — you have launched programs that didn’t exist before, in environments where the playbook wasn’t already written. 

• Excellent business acumen and the ability to translate L&D investment into business outcomes. 

 Preferred: 

• Coaching certification (ICF, CTI, Hudson, or equivalent). 

• Certifications in talent assessments (e.g., Hogan, DiSC, MBTI, Korn Ferry, CCL instruments). 

• Experience in a public company, high-growth tech company, or HR/recruiting tech industry. 

• Experience with LMS platforms, talent management technology, and AI-enabled learning tools. 

• Background partnering with sales and engineering leadership populations. 

• Experience owning an employee engagement survey lifecycle, from instrument design through executive readouts and action accountability.