Director, Training & Development

About the role

The Director, Training & Development is responsible for employee knowledge and skills development for DealerOn employees. The Director is responsible for partnering with the company leaders to develop and execute strategies that improve the organization's knowledge, product skills, customer effectiveness, employee growth, and retention.

The primary focus for this position is to drive the business forward by developing employee knowledge and skill proficiencies, improving operational efficiency, and a learning environment that attracts and retains top talent. This role leads the training team, manages, and mentors the team's staff, including establishing, collaborating on, and measuring individual and team goals.

The position reports to and collaborates with the Senior VP of Customer Success to define and formalize and implement department standards and SOP; and works closely with cross functional leaders to ensure a clear and shared understanding of processes.

Essential Functions

• Establish and maintain relationships and effectively communicate with peers, business unit leaders and senior management to ensure a collaborative corporate environment.
• Work with DealerOn leaders to develop long-term knowledge and skills growth plans and to determine how we prioritize and invest training resources.
• Ensure that effective onboarding training programs are identified, designed, and implemented that deliver effective new hire and ongoing technical and training curriculum.
• Ensure that an effective ongoing refresher and coaching program is identified, designed, and implemented that produces high quality customer-facing soft skills and communication proficiencies.
• Own the strategy, standards and governance for the Salesforce Knowledge base, including content ownership, review cadence and retirement of outdated articles, so employees and AI tools can rely on it as the trusted source of truth.
• Train Success Managers (CSMs) to serve as consultants to Dealers, guiding them on DealerOn's value proposition and providing consultative support to ensure training initiatives contribute significantly to the company's investment.
• Define and report on measures that tie training to business results, such as time for new hires to get up to speed, quality and error rates, and customer retention. Set team OKRs and individual KPIs against those measures and adjust programs based on the results.
• Collaborate with team leadership and HR to develop certification paths that support skill development and career growth.
• Ensure certification programs align with team goals and create clear advancement opportunities.
• Manage overall team staffing, including recruitment, performance management, development, evaluation, and disciplinary actions.
• Collaborate with the Support, Inventory, Product, Sales and Operations teams to ensure that all new training materials, tools, and processes are effectively delivered to their team.
• Provide employees with coaching, feedback, and developmental opportunities to enhance their skills, motivation, and performance.
• Develop, document, implement and enforce operational policies and procedures via our internal knowledge base and LMS.
• Stay current on all products and processes by working with department management. Ensure that all employees are trained on the most current information.
• Partner with Product and Marketing to build a release-readiness process that ensures training, knowledge articles and go-to-market enablement are in place before new products and features reach customers.
• Utilize a value-driven approach to design training programs that maximize the impact and effectiveness of DealerOn's investment.
• Apply innovative instructional design and learning technology, including AI, to create engaging, role-specific training that builds proficiency faster and scales with the business.
• Combine industry knowledge with hands-on experience to deliver training initiatives that drive results and contribute to the overall success of DealerOn.

What Success Looks Like

• New hires follow a consistent onboarding path, shared by training and the departments, and the time it takes to get up to speed is measured.
• Training builds customer and industry knowledge alongside tool skills, so employees understand why they do the work, not just how.
• Training and knowledge articles are ready before every major product release.
• Salesforce Knowledge has clear owners and a review cadence, so people trust it and the AI tools that rely on it.
• Training is tied to two or three business metrics that CS, Support and Product leaders agree matter.
• The training team has visible career paths and improving engagement scores.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Education, Computer Science, Marketing, Project Management, Business Administration, or equivalent program.
• Demonstrated success and 7+ years of experience in leadership, ideally specific to technical training and / or technical support in the automotive industry.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to present complex technical issues clearly and concisely to a general audience.
• Act as a change leader with demonstrated passion about customer support and employee development.
• Excellent problem-solving skills with a service mindset that balances the needs of the company and employees.
• Able to multi-task and work in a fast-paced, energetic, and continuously evolving environment.
• Proactive approach to accomplishing work, high attention to detail and accuracy, has consistent follow up, and strong organizational skills.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills that motivate the department and safeguards OEM/customer relationships.
• Previous experience with Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as TalentLMS and Salesforce Knowledge.
• Extensive experience from the automotive/IT background, having responsibility for upskilling a large learner population.
• Proven track record of running successful training programs with a deep understanding of strategic consulting within the Account Management Process.

Preferred Skills/Experience

• Previous experience (2+ years) working in and knowledge of the automotive industry.
• Previous management experience in a technical support environment.
• Previous experience developing and delivering technical and soft skill training.
• Experience working in a high-tech, software, or SaaS company.
• Strong management skills with attention to detail.

This position is open to US residents only.

Pay and benefits

The targeted salary range for this position is $90,000 - $150,000.

The posted salary range for this position may be adjusted based on job-related factors permitted by law, such as experience and training; internal pay equity; licensure and certifications; market factors; departmental budgets; and responsibility. Our Talent Acquisition Team will be happy to answer any questions.

Perks and Benefits

Aside from the awesome people you will get to interact with on a daily basis, we offer a number of benefits, including:

• Medical, dental and vision insurance
• Company matched 401K plan
• Flexible PTO + Sick Leave
• 6 weeks paid Parental Leave
• 8 Paid National Holidays
• Company-paid basic Life Insurance
• Voluntary supplemental Life Insurance
• Voluntary long-term/short-term disability insurance
• Voluntary Pet Insurance
• Optional Healthcare/Dependent Care FSA Account

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