Assistant Commissioner- Training and Development

About the role

The New York City Department of Correction (DOC) is an integral part of the City's evolving criminal justice system, participating in reform initiatives and strategies aimed at moving the city towards a smaller jail system without compromising public safety. The DOC is responsible for maintaining a safe and secure environment for our employees, visitors, volunteers, and people in our custody.

Importantly, safe jails enable DOC to provide people in custody with the tools and opportunities they need to successfully re-enter their communities. The DOC operates facilities and court commands across the five boroughs with more than 7,500 diverse professionals and knowledgeable experts.

Under the executive direction of the Deputy Commissioner for Training and Development, the Assistant Commissioner for Training and Development serves as a senior executive responsible for the administration, coordination, and operational oversight of the New York City Department of Correction's comprehensive training, workforce development, and professional development programs.

The Assistant Commissioner supports the Deputy Commissioner in implementing the strategic vision of the Training and Development Division (TDD) by establishing measurable operational objectives, strengthening supervisory structures, and ensuring the effective execution of training initiatives across the Department.

This position provides executive-level leadership and coordination among academy administrators, managers, supervisors, instructors, and support personnel to ensure training programs remain operationally relevant, instructionally effective, compliant with applicable laws and regulations, and responsive to the Department's evolving needs.

Through strategic resource management, continuous program evaluation, and the implementation of performance improvements, the Assistant Commissioner promotes workforce readiness, instructional excellence, leadership development, institutional safety, accountability, and measurable improvements in employee performance, ultimately supporting the Department's mission of maintaining safe, secure, professional, and effective correctional operations.

Strategic Leadership and Organizational Management

• Implement and monitor training strategy, operational plans, performance measures, staffing needs, timelines, and accountability.
• Align near- and long-term priorities with operations, workforce needs, reforms, risks, and public-safety practices; represent TDD as assigned.
• Establish short-, intermediate-, and long-term priorities aligned with Department operations, workforce needs, reform requirements, identified organizational risks, and recognized correctional and public-safety practices

Academy, Recruit, Field, and In-Service Training

• Oversee Recruit Academy, Field Training Unit, in-service training, and assigned programs.
• Ensure adequate staff, supervision, scheduling, facilities, equipment, assessments, remediation, safety, and quality controls.
• Integrate classroom and field training through practical scenarios, coaching, competency assessments, and curricula aligned with policy and legal requirements.

Leadership and Professional Development

• Oversee supervisory, pre-promotional, mentoring, coaching, and leadership development for uniformed and civilian personnel.
• Build role-specific supervisory, administrative, interpersonal, decision-making, and operational skills; support succession planning.

Facility-Based Training and Performance Improvement

• Analyze incidents, reviews, audits, investigations, corrective actions, observations, and performance data to identify skill and supervisory gaps.
• Coordinate targeted training, coaching, and remediation with facility leadership;

incorporate operational lessons into instruction.

Training Compliance, Analytics, and Quality Assurance

• Develop and monitor LMS data, training records, dashboards, completion rates, competency measures, and operational trends to identify gaps and risks.
• Evaluate learning and field application through assessments, practical testing, and supervisor observations; recommend corrective action.

Curriculum and Instructor Development

• Establish standards for curriculum design, delivery, testing, evaluation, and revision consistent with policy, law, adult learning, and operational needs reflecting current

Department policies

• Oversee instructor selection, certification, development, evaluation, and deployment, including Instructor and Master Instructor Development programs.

Emergency Preparedness and Operational Readiness

• Integrate incident command, fire and life safety, active threats, medical response, continuity, and critical-incident readiness into training.
• Coordinate drills, simulations, tabletop exercises, after-action reviews, and joint training with relevant partners.

Personnel, Budget, and Resource Management

• Direct, supervise and evaluate uniformed and civilian leaders, instructors, analysts, administrative staff, and support personnel.
• Assess staffing requirements, assignments, organizational structure, and succession needs; assist with budgets, contracts, procurement, technology, facilities, and equipment.
• Identify resource constraints affecting safety, capacity, compliance, quality, and readiness; recommend solutions.

Partnerships and Organizational Improvement

• Build relationships with educational, government, correctional, law-enforcement, research, and professional partners.
• Pursue executive education, credentials, research, technical assistance, grants, and collaboration supporting reform, safety, accountability, and performance.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Competencies

• Demonstrated strategic and instructional leadership;
• Multi-program, personnel, facility, project, and resource management.
• Adult learning, curriculum design, scenario-based instruction, competency assessment, coaching, mentoring, leadership development, compliance, emergency preparedness, and performance improvement.
• Data analysis, risk assessment, problem-solving, change leadership, collaboration, accountability, and executive-level written and oral communication with internal and external stakeholders.