Lead Metadata Specialist

Lead Metadata Specialist McGraw Hill $125,000 - $155,000 United States, Ohio, Columbus 8787 Orion Place (Show on map) Apr 16, 2026 Overview Build the Future At McGraw Hill, we are dedicated to delivering digital learning experiences that transform education for learners and educators. Our focus is on creating seamless, impactful products that truly benefit our users while supporting growth and collaboration across teams. We foster a culture that values innovation, teamwork, and a balance between career growth and personal well-being. How can you make an impact? We are seeking a Lead Metadata Specialist to guide metadata strategy and implementation across McGraw Hill's Higher Education business unit. This role leads projects that advance the design, management, and use of educational metadata-especially around competencies, objectives and assessment and other types of content-to improve discoverability, personalization, and analytics across products and platforms. The Lead Metadata Specialist will collaborate with curriculum, product, and technical teams to ensure alignment across metadata workflows and business goals. This role also provides mentorship and leadership for metadata specialists and coordinates with the Enterprise Metadata team to support enterprise-level initiatives. This is a remote position open to applicants authorized to work for any employer within the United States.

What You'll Do:

Lead the design and execution of metadata projects that enhance the creation, delivery, and management of higher education content while also enabling robust personalized learning services to discover and use relevant content for students and instructors. Partner with learning and data scientists to explore opportunities for metadata inference and enrichment to support adaptive learning and personalization. Develop and maintain learning ontologies and controlled vocabularies for higher education academic disciplines, content, and learning services. Collaborate with curriculum, product, and technical teams to define metadata strategies that align with business unit goals and emerging learning technology trends. Provide technical leadership in implementing scalable metadata workflows and quality assurance processes using standard tools and platforms. Lead and Collaborate with Metadata Specialists, fostering consistency, capacity and growth across metadata initiatives. Collaborate cross-functionally to develop documentation, training materials, and communications that promote understanding and effective use of metadata across design and product teams. Monitor external developments in metadata standards and best practices for higher education and integrate relevant frameworks to ensure alignment and innovation.

Who You Are:

6+ years in education or educational technology, with at least 3 years direct experience managing educational metadata, learning objective frameworks, and/or competency structures in Higher Education. Master's degree in education, learning sciences, information science, or a related field (required or equivalent experience). Advanced understanding of metadata standards and interoperability frameworks used in Higher Education. Experience with e-book, assessment, and other educational content design for Higher Education. Highly organized, self-motivated, able to manage multiple complex projects simultaneously. Strong leadership and mentoring capabilities. Growth mindset and openness to change, with a positive attitude and interest in improving over time. Excellent communication skills, able to bridge technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred:

Experience working with AI tools and awareness of their potential for educational content and interactions. Experience designing and implementing educational recommendation systems. Proficiency with collaboration and project tools such as JIRA, Confluence, Teams, and Slack. Why work for us? The work you do at McGraw Hill will be work that matters. We are collectively building experiences that will help shape the future of education. Play your part and experience a sense of fulfilment that will inspire you to even greater heights. The pay range for this position is between $125,000 - $155,000 annually. However, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and location. An annual bonus plan may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical and/or other benefits, depending on the position offered. Click here to learn more about our benefit offerings. McGraw Hill recruiters always use a "@mheducation.com" email address and/or from our Applicant Tracking System, iCIMS. Any variation of this email domain should be considered suspicious. Additionally, McGraw Hill recruiters and authorized representatives will never request sensitive information in email. 50631 McGraw Hill uses an automated employment decision tool (AEDT) to assist in the screening process by recommending candidates with "like skills" based on resume and job data. To request an alternative screening process, please select "Opt-Out" when asked to "Consent to use of Automated Employment Decision Tools" during the application.