Vice President, Assessment Design & Development

Vice President, Assessment Design & Development

College Board – Learning & Assessment Division

Location: This is a remote role. Candidates who live near CB offices have the option of being fully remote or hybrid (Tuesday and Wednesday in office). All CB employees are required to occasionally travel to meet in person for business purposes.

Role Type: This is a full-time position

About the Team

Learning & Assessment is College Board's center for researching, designing, delivering, and strengthening high-quality assessments that serve more than 7+ million students annually and advance opportunity around the world. The division brings together 150+ experts in research, psychometrics, and assessment design and development to ensure our assessments are rigorous, accessible, and grounded in evidence. In close partnership with teams across College Board, Learning & Assessment leads innovation in assessment design, ensures valid, reliable, and error-free scores, and provides the evidence and insights that guide program strategy and shape understanding of important educational issues.

Assessment Design & Development (AD&D) is L&A's content engine — the team responsible for the item and assessment development that powers the SAT Suite and ACCUPLACER. AD&D is expanding its mandate: beyond sustaining operational excellence for existing programs, the department is building the shared infrastructure to scale assessment item development across programs and designing the new item types and assessments the future of assessments demands.

About the Opportunity

K-12 large-scale assessments are at an inflection point. What we need to measure is shifting — from academic knowledge and skills alone toward the durable and career-relevant skills students will need in an AI-rich world. How we measure it is shifting too, as AI reshapes what's possible in item design, content development, and scoring. And the pace of change itself has become a competitive variable: the organizations that move fastest from idea to validated, operational assessment will set the field’s standard for quality.

AD&D sits at the center of all three shifts — steering it is as much about setting a point of view on where assessment is headed as it is about running the department that gets us there.

As Vice President, you will lead AD&D through this expansion — setting the vision and resourcing the Department's expanded mandate, building a newly structured leadership team, and shaping College Board's internal and external point of view on what rigorous, AI-era assessments look like.

In this role, you will:

Strategic Vision & Leadership (50%) 

• Fulfill AD&D's expanded mandate — sustaining operational excellence, scaling assessment content development, and developing new assessments — by setting and resourcing the vision and holding the department accountable to results.

• Sustain operational excellence across current College Board assessment products — SAT Suite of Assessments, AP, and ACCUPLACER — by ensuring accessible and zero-error, on-time delivery.

• Outpace rising content demands by defining the strategic direction to accelerate content production across the enterprise.

• Advance new assessment products by championing and leading overall strategy for the design of new assessments and item formats, partnering effectively across program teams, Psychometrics, Technology, and Digital Product.

• Align senior stakeholders — including the CEO, President, and SVP Learning & Assessment — by expertly communicating assessment design and development strategy, progress, and trade-offs.

Team Leadership and Management (30%) 

• Build and lead the Executive Director team responsible for executing AD&D’s priorities and managing 70+ assessment designers, content developers, analysts and project managers.

• Set vision and priorities for the team, track and manage progress to goals, and provide coaching and support to ensure team members meet and exceed goals, remain engaged, and contribute meaningfully to our mission.

• Cultivate an inclusive and high achieving culture that enables all team members to live out College Board’s Operating Principles.

• Bring proven leadership experience and consistently embody College Board’s Manager Expectations in your work.

• Sit on College Board's Learning & Assessment Leadership Team, meeting regularly with senior L&A leaders to align AD&D's work with the division's broader strategy and priorities.

Thought Leadership (20%)

• Strengthen College Board's external reputation as a forward-looking authority on the future of assessment by representing the organization's point of view at industry conferences, in publications, and within the broader assessment community.

• Shape internal decisions on what skills and constructs matter most to assess as the demands on students evolve, contributing to College Board's point of view on the future of assessment and directing the team's work to bring it to life.

About You

• Expertise in large-scale assessment design and development, psychometrics, and/or the future of work and assessments, with 10+ years of progressive leadership experience, including experience operating at the senior executive level.

• A substantive, evidence-based point of view on where K-12 assessment is headed — the academic, durable, career-relevant, and non-cognitive skills students will need in a rapidly shifting economy, and how AI is reshaping the constructs, methods, and formats used to measure them.

• Fluency with the principles that govern sound assessment — validity, fairness, accessibility, reliability — and working facility with major psychometric approaches (e.g., item response theory, classical test theory, structural equation modeling) and key considerations (e.g., information yield, discrimination, multidimensionality, scaling) as they relate to item- and test-level design decisions.

• A track record of leading assessment or content development organizations through significant transformation — scaling operations, introducing new capabilities, or repositioning a team's mandate.

• Proven success sustaining zero-error, high-volume, deadline-driven assessment operations at scale, including experience leading through periods of intense test security or production pressure.

• Experience conceiving new assessment designs, item types, or measurement approaches and shepherding them from idea to operational reality.

• A track record of representing a public-facing point of view on assessment design, measurement, and/or the future of skills externally, through publications, conference keynotes, or industry panels.

• A proven ability to build and lead a leadership team of senior managers — hiring, developing, and holding them accountable to a shared, uncompromising standard of excellence, with demonstrated success managing through layers.

• Demonstrated strategic, inclusive people leadership — setting clear priorities, building effective team structures, and driving performance through high expectations, real-time evidence-based feedback, and coaching that stretches team members toward meaningful impact.

• Executive presence and track record of cross-functional influence at the C-suite and senior-leadership level, partnering effectively across program, technology, product, and research functions to advance enterprise priorities.

• The ability to travel up to 25% of the year to College Board offices or on behalf of College Board business.

All roles at College Board require:

• A passion for expanding educational and career opportunities and mission-driven work.

• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technologies, with a willingness to experiment with and adopt new AI-driven solutions and comfort with learning and applying new digital tools independently and proactively.

• Clear and concise communication skills, written and verbal.

• A learner's mindset and a commitment to growth: welcoming diverse perspectives, giving and receiving timely, respectful feedback, and continuously improving through iterative learning and user input.

• A drive for impact and excellence: solving complex problems, making data-informed decisions, prioritizing what matters most, and continuously improving through learning, user input, and external benchmarking.

• A collaborative and empathetic approach: working across differences, fostering trust, and contributing to a culture of shared success.

• Authorization to work in the United States.

About Our Process

• Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. This role is expected to accept applications for a minimum of 5 business days.

• While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes: resume and application submission, recruiter phone/video screen, hiring manager interview, performance exercise, a panel interview, a conversation with leadership and reference checks.

What We Offer

At College Board, we offer more than a paycheck: we provide a meaningful career, a supportive team, and a comprehensive package designed to help you thrive. We’re a self-sustaining nonprofit that believes in fair and competitive compensation grounded in your qualifications, experience, impact, and the market.

A Thoughtful Approach to Compensation

• The hiring range for this role is $231,000–$315,000.

• Your exact salary will depend on your location, experience, and how your background compares to others in similar roles at the College Board.

• We aim to make our best offer upfront, rooted in fairness, transparency, and market data.

• We adjust salaries by location to ensure fairness, no matter where you live.

You’ll have open, transparent conversations about compensation, benefits, and what it’s like to work at College Board throughout your hiring process. Check out our careers page for more.

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