Who we’re looking for… 

Role: Director of Research Operations

Team: Research

Reports To: Head of Research

Supervisory Responsibility: This role will have 2 direct reports, the Lead Survey Programmer and Research Operations Lead. This leadership role will be responsible for overseeing the Knit research operations, programming, QA, and fieldwork teams. 

Location: New York City or Chicago, USA; Strong preference given to candidates in NYC or Chicago. Knit’s global team is located across the US and India. We have a remote working policy with a hybrid model, with pods in NYC, Austin, Chicago, D.C., and Delhi. 

Travel: This role will be expected to travel a few times per quarter, specifically for internal planning and strategy meetings to Chicago & NYC. Note, Knit US does a US All Team Summit in-person once per year.

A little about us… 

Knit is the The Researcher-Driven AI Platform helping researchers run agency-quality quant + qual research at DIY costs & speed. Through Knit, brands like NASCAR, JBL, and Mars automate their consumer research process to get a quicker and more holistic understanding of their audiences.

Role Purpose 

The Director of Research Operations is core to Knit’s success by building, implementing, and optimizing the research workflow to deliver consistent, high-quality data. By leading the programming, fieldwork, and QA functions, this role is expected to maximize data collection efficiencies and quality, resulting in exceptional customer experiences and repeat/new business. This leadership role is expected to drive product innovation, AI adoption in the project lifecycle, and automation capabilities to improve how Knit executes research. 

Business Impact | What you will own… 

The research function is a primary contributor to Knit’s shared business objectives of customer retention and upsells, ultimately measured by Net Revenue Retention (NRR) in addition to supporting successful Pilot to Subscription Conversions for acquiring new business.

The levers the Director of Research Operations owns to influence these business metrics are: 

• Delivering an Exceptional Customer Experience: 
  • Leading Programming, Fieldwork, and QA teams to collaborate in setting, meeting, and improving Knit’s data collection SLA’s to meet customer demands and remain competitive in the market research tech landscape 
    • Reducing the average time to final N (become the fastest possible in the industry)
    • Improve data quality (highest quality responses in the industry) 
    • Improve feasibility (expand audience network to support niche use cases, different sampling techniques, etc.)
  • Enhancing efficiencies through Product Innovation, AI & Automation: Leading programming, fielding, and QA teams in collaborating with AI and product teams to revolutionize the way the MR industry thinks about research ops and ideating on new solutions to maximize efficiencies and improve customer value. 
  • Apply operational expertise to help prioritise and assign enhancements to delivery methods in collaboration with Research and Product teams - be able to clearly map operational process workflows, identify areas for automation, and collaborate with leadership to plan investment areas.
  • Work with Head of Research to parse and apply customer feedback to continuously drive workflow improvements. 
• Increasing net new capabilities to drive New Business Opportunities: 
  • Collaborating across the organization to successfully operationalize new research Knit can support - new capabilities, use cases, and audiences
  • For example:
    • Launching international capabilities by driving the initiative from scoping (what is required by the customer in this market) to implementation (compliance, new languages, market-specific needs).
    • Providing operational/executional support for advanced analytic techniques as it impacts Programming, Fielding, and QA
• Serving as the Research Operations Function Leader
  • Own company-level objectives, key results, and KPI’s - specifically for improving the strategy for execution, delivery and reporting
  • Exemplifying company values 
  • Participating in company-wide decision-making and OKR Planning 
  • Driving people operations decisions for the Research Operations Function (process mapping, organizational design, capacity management, staff forecasting, recruiting, hiring, onboarding, performance management, conflict resolution, and morale building)

Required Skills & Experiences

• Minimum of 10 years in the insights and market research industry - our ideal candidate has worked in a market research tech agency, leading research operations 
• ⭐ ️ Must have: Proven track record of having built and scaled complex sampling operations for multiple research methodologies (quick-turn, quant & qual), integrating quality check mechanisms.
• Deep experience with survey programming across tools like Qualtrics, Decipher, etc.
• Our ideal candidate has cross-functional experience leading and enabling both internal and external teams on research ops processes from idea to full implementation. For example, pricing & feasibility with Sales, positioning with Marketing, compliance with Operations, innovation with Product, etc. We are not looking for a participant in the process - we are looking for a leader who has been in the driver role standing up net new organizational-wide capabilities from scratch. 
• ⭐️ Must have: Extreme proclivity for automation and productization, a leader who has innovated and built efficiencies into processes that otherwise would not exist - we are looking for somebody who can take a manual process and scale it beyond themselves to support hundreds of custom research projects at any given point
• Highly effective people operations leader both cross-functionally and at the function level - specifically in: 
  • Operationalizing new processes from ideation to full implementation 
  • Process mapping, organizational design, capacity management, staff forecasting, recruiting, hiring, onboarding, performance management, conflict resolution, and morale building

US Benefits

Upon joining the Knit team, you will receive a competitive salary, Equity Options, Healthcare (medical, dental, and vision), and Additional Coverage, a company laptop and one-time, onboarding Technology Stipend, a 401(k) with company match, flexible time-off, hybrid working, and more

Our Values

• We are thoughtful of others.
• We are mindful of ourselves. 
• We deliver delightful experiences.