Education and Credentialing Manager - Tysons, VA

Overview

The Manager, Workforce Credentialing & Education owns enterprise credentialing, education pathways, and workforce readiness programs across MCDEAN. This role ensures employees meet credential, license, academic, and degree requirements for business, contract, and promotion eligibility. The manager operationalizes credential and degree pathways, oversees enterprise licensing and remediation programs, manages external education partnerships, aligns credentialing to the career framework, and provides measurable visibility into workforce readiness and compliance risk.  

• Own enterprise credentialing strategy and operations: Maintain a living, accurate view of credentialing and licensing status by role, region, division, and contract requirement; identify compliance gaps before they become project or contract risks and own the remediation plan. 

• Design and manage credentialing pathways: Build and oversee certification and licensing pathways for high-priority workforce credentials, including electrical licensing, NETA, BICSI, CompTIA, CISSP, and PMP/PMI, central to business and contract execution. 

• Manage external education partnerships: Act as MCDEAN's single accountable owner for the academic rigor and outcomes of external learning partners; define partner selection criteria; negotiate articulation agreements and credit or certificate pathways; set and enforce partner KPI scorecards and accreditation standards; oversee PLA, enrollment, and tuition supports; and run regular QA reviews and continuous-improvement cycles to ensure programs deliver agreed learning outcomes and workforce readiness. 

• Design micro-credential strategy: Build stackable credentials that ladder into certificate and degree programs; define outcomes, assessment gates, and credit-exchange rules so credentials are portable and map to the career framework. 

• Coordinate tuition assistance, PLA, and enrollment support: Serve as the central point of contact between employees, Benefits, Finance, Payroll, and academic partners; manage tuition reimbursement intake and approvals; establish PLA processes to convert apprenticeship and work experience into academic credit; and coordinate enrollment advising so courses map to career-framework pathways and IDPs. 

• Own credentialing policy and governance: Define and maintain company credentialing policies, including reimbursement processes, renewal timelines, role-based requirements, exam scheduling protocols, and required documentation; coordinate with HR, Legal, Operations, and project leadership to keep policy current and enforceable. 

• Maintain the enterprise course catalog: Curate, retire, and tag catalog items; ensure each active item is mapped to career-framework competencies and, where applicable, to credit, credential, or promotion pathways. 

• Operationalize credential-to-career mapping: Collaborate with Talent/HR, Content, and Field/Operations partners to translate credentials and degrees into our career framework; promotion criteria, readiness indicators, and succession decisions. 

• Manage the promotion education and waiver program for EL, PL, and SL: Define and operationalize education requirements for promotion to Engineering Leader, Project Leader, and Systems Leader; establish standards requiring candidates to hold a relevant degree, an approved time-bound completion plan, or an approved education waiver based on equivalent credentials or licensure; maintain promotion-ready records and ensure consistent, competency-based promotion decisions. 

• Own reporting and workforce-readiness visibility: Build and maintain dashboards providing leadership insight into credentialing status, exam pass rates, upcoming expirations, promotion-readiness, tuition and degree-pathway participation, and program ROI; partner with Learning Technology & Integrations on reporting infrastructure and data quality. 

• Serve as the employee-facing credentialing and education advisor: Translate complex credentialing, degree, and promotion requirements into clear, actionable guidance for employees, managers, and business leaders; ensure employees understand what they need next and what support is available

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Organizational Development, Adult Learning, Education, Business, or related field preferred. 

• 8+ years of progressive experience in learning and development, workforce development, credentialing, continuing education, or related program management. 13+ with a high school diploma / GED.

• Demonstrated experience managing external education partnerships, credentialing or licensing programs, or workforce-readiness initiatives. 

• Experience designing or operationalizing credential pathways, reimbursement processes, academic programs, or equivalent workforce development systems

Preferred Qualifications