Insights Research Assistant Director

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for an Insights Research Assistant Director based in United States.

• Lead custom research projects across qualitative, quantitative, and hybrid methodologies, managing activities from initial scoping and research design through execution, analysis, and delivery.
• Partner with sales, account, project, and client stakeholders to understand business objectives and translate them into practical research plans, timelines, budgets, and deliverables.
• Recommend appropriate research methodologies, including focus groups, IDIs, surveys, conjoint analysis, MaxDiff, sequential monadic testing, message and concept testing, and usage & attitude studies.
• Advise clients on methodological trade-offs, clearly explain recommended approaches, and confidently challenge requested methods when they may not address the underlying business question.
• Develop study plans, discussion guides, surveys, research activities, data-collection strategies, and reporting plans aligned with project objectives.
• Oversee survey programming, platform configuration, testing, troubleshooting, fieldwork, and other research execution activities.
• Guide qualitative and quantitative data interpretation, validate data quality, and ensure findings are translated into clear, actionable business recommendations.
• Review and oversee executive summaries, presentations, dashboards, reports, video reels, storytelling materials, and other client-facing deliverables.
• Present research findings and recommendations to clients and internal stakeholders, including communicating areas of ambiguity or disagreement with confidence and professionalism.
• Directly supervise, coach, and develop Insights team members through regular feedback, performance discussions, training, and professional development.
• Manage team capacity and resource allocation across concurrent projects, establishing priorities and ensuring workloads are balanced effectively.
• Establish and maintain quality standards across research design, programming, data processing, analysis, and reporting.
• Develop reusable templates, tools, workflows, and best practices that improve efficiency, consistency, and scalability.
• Identify opportunities to apply technology, automation, AI, and emerging research tools to improve research delivery and insight generation.
• Partner with project leadership on operational planning, issue resolution, departmental growth, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Maintain compliance with internal processes and applicable ISO standards.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in marketing, market research, communications, psychology, statistics, data science, STEM, or a related discipline.
• At least 3 years of experience in a market research agency, insights consultancy, research supplier, or corporate market research/insights environment with direct experience applying established market research methodologies.
• Strong understanding of both qualitative and quantitative research, with exposure to techniques such as conjoint analysis, MaxDiff, sequential monadic testing, message/concept testing, and usage & attitude studies.
• Experience leading or supervising a team, or demonstrated readiness to transition into a people-management position.
• Proven ability to advise clients or internal stakeholders on research methodology, explain trade-offs, and confidently defend recommendations.
• Experience personally designing, executing, and analyzing complex quantitative studies is a plus.
• Experience independently developing executive-level reports, presentations, and research deliverables is a plus.
• Strong project management and organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects and competing priorities while maintaining attention to detail.
• Strong analytical, critical-thinking, and problem-solving abilities, including the capacity to identify root causes and develop sustainable solutions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the confidence to communicate directly with clients and senior stakeholders.
• Ability to scope research projects and translate objectives into clear execution plans for teams.
• Comfortable reviewing and interpreting research data and deliverables, identifying quality issues, and guiding teams toward stronger outputs.
• Exposure to advanced methodologies, panel/sample design, data visualization, storytelling, mobile ethnography, product testing, or behavioral research is advantageous.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled research and analytics tools and an interest in adopting emerging technologies.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office tools, particularly Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and SharePoint.
• Experience with survey platforms such as Qualtrics, Forsta, or comparable solutions.
• Familiarity with data ma