A few of the 760+ employers
AIDA grads have been hired at 760+ employers, from Fortune 500 companies to hospitals, universities, and government agencies, and employers come back: 106 companies have hired two or more AIDA grads, and 49 have hired three or more. Among the 347 grads who reported an annual salary, the average is about $76,000 and the median is $75,000. 82% of the jobs are full-time, 61% are fully remote, and 65% of respondents said this was their first instructional design job after AIDA. 74% earned more than in the job they had before AIDA. 84% are still in instructional design three or more years after AIDA, and 40% found their job through networking. On average, it takes about 10 months from starting AIDA to getting hired. Grads come to ID from teaching, higher ed, corporate jobs and L&D. The numbers come from 622 verified AIDA grads.
Since joining AIDA, grads have been hired into ID jobs at 760+ employers. Here are some of them, and the full list is right below.
Employers come back, too. 49 companies have hired three or more AIDA grads, and 106 have hired two or more. The ones that have hired the most are C2 Technologies (31 grads), Career Certified (21), Hurix Digital (12), Navy Federal Credit Union (10) and SweetRush (10). These counts come from the paid work questionnaire and grads' LinkedIn profiles. The real numbers are higher, because we couldn't check every grad.
Remote or on-site, full-time or part-time, salaried or hourly, employee or contract, from the grads who answered each question.
These look at grads three or more years out, from the public LinkedIn profiles we could check, so they count only the jobs grads list there.
Half found their ID job through people, and 1 in 4 found it through AIDA. 40% came through networking, whether that was their own network, another AIDA grad or AIDA career services. Another 9% heard from a recruiter or the company first.
445 questionnaire answers · through October 2026. A referral counts as AIDA when the grad named another AIDA grad.
Pick an industry to see the share of grads who work in it.
of grads who named an industry work in Education.
| All-time | |
|---|---|
| Questionnaire responses from hired grads | 622 |
| Employers that have hired AIDA grads | 760+ |
| Average annual salary | $75,850 347 usable responses |
| Median annual salary | $75,000 |
| Salary range | $48,000 – $147,700 |
| Average hourly rate (contract) | $42.70/hr 214 usable responses · median $40 |
| Full-time / part-time | 82% / 18% |
| Remote / hybrid / on-site | 61% / 29% / 10% |
| Employee (W2) / contract (1099) | 75% / 25% |
The numbers come from two places. AIDA's paid work questionnaire, which graduates fill out when they accept paid instructional design work, gives 622 responses through October 2026, and those figures are self-reported. The numbers about what happened next (still in ID, moving up, time in a job) come from grads' public LinkedIn profiles, read in October and November 2026. Grads we couldn't check on LinkedIn are left out of those numbers.
Not every respondent answers every question, so each figure cites its own sample size: 347 usable annual-salary responses, 214 usable hourly-rate responses. A handful of clear data-entry errors were removed before computing hourly figures. Pay change compares the salary a grad reported for the job before AIDA with the salary for the ID job, salaried jobs only. A title counts as a move up when the new title is a higher level (senior, lead, manager or director). Employer names are pooled across all responses, and no individual grad's job is published without their permission.
How long it takes, on average: AIDA grads go through the program in about 6 months (623 reported), and they get hired about 4 months after they start applying (554 reported). Those are averages across our grads. Nobody can promise you a date, and every search moves at its own pace.
Jill Davidian is the founder of Learning Strategy & Design and creator of the Applied ID Portfolio Method. 20+ years in instructional design, including time as a hiring manager. 1,200+ AIDA graduates. More about Jill
Last updated: November 2026
Want to be the next hire at one of these 760+ employers? AIDA is where our grads started. Current openings are on the instructional design job board.
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