Senior Research Director

What we're looking for

Role: Senior Research Director

Team: Research

Reports To: Managing Director, Research

Supervisory Responsibility: This role will have 2-4 direct reports and oversee teams of 6-8 Research Directors and Research Managers.

Location: We have a remote working policy, so we are looking for teammates anywhere in the US! However, we do have pods in NYC, Chicago, and D.C., where we would love for you to work any time you’d like. Our standard operating hours are Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm EST. Actual work schedules will be based on the candidate's time zone and client requirements.

Travel: This role will occasionally be expected to travel for ad hoc in-person customer requests, in-person internal working sessions, and our once per year US All Team Summit.

A little about us

Knit is the AI-native consumer research platform helping brands automate and accelerate primary research. With our Researcher-Driven AI, we’ve condensed the entire quant + qual research process from weeks into days (sometimes hours!) for 50+ enterprise brands — including Amazon, T-Mobile, Mars, NASCAR, and more. We’re on a mission to scale and democratize world-class research. From survey generation to stakeholder-ready reports, our platform is redefining how insights teams operate — and we need your help to push the limits of what’s possible.

Overview

The purpose of the Senior Research Director role is to to lead a pod of researchers to deliver exceptional client outcomes while directly owning and executing high-impact, complex research engagements. As both a people leader and a hands-on research leader, this role is responsible for ensuring successful delivery across their pod’s portfolio of accounts, while serving as the first point of escalation for client and project challenges. The Senior Research Director’s impact is ultimately measured by customer satisfaction, growth, and retention, as well as successfully helping the GTM team land new clients to Knit.

You will own

The research function is a primary contributor to Knit's shared business objective of growing Contracted Annual Recurring Revenue (CARR) — through both customer retention and upsells, measured by Net Revenue Retention (NRR), and through successful Pilot to Subscription Conversions that convert new logos into recurring revenue.

The levers the Senior Director - Research owns to influence these key business objectives are:

• Research Pod Leadership → Structuring and optimizing pod operations to drive high performance, accountability, and quality, while contributing to the evolution of broader research processes and operating models across Knit. Leads, develops, and motivates team members, setting the standard through hands-on, high-impact client leadership.
• Driving Research Success → Ensuring the research pod works effectively with Customers to successfully achieve their desired research outcomes through their projects with Knit, measured by successfully achieving Research Objectives and delivering on Knit’s Quality & Speed service-level agreements (SLA’s).

Primary responsibilities:

• Serving as the person ultimately accountable for research project success across their pod of RDs and RMs — acting as the primary point of escalation for Research Directors when research needs exceed what they can own independently
• Successful & effective people management, ensuring they are successfully fulfilling their role’s responsibilities and growing in impact (People Management at Knit includes driving performance, driving clarity and accountability, hiring, onboarding, upskilling competencies, performance management, conflict resolution, and morale building.)
• Driving and documenting in-depth project scoping to uncover a deep understanding of research objectives and project context to set up project success, including building out the client's Research Context Library (RCL) — capturing norms, standards, and preferences to align Knit's outputs to client-ready deliverables
• Driving as the strategic problem solver, research subject matter expert, and solutions architect for for our highest potential prospects and customers, working with Sales to educate them on Knit’s research capabilities, consulting with them to adjust for fringe requirements, and proposing solutions to maximize project success
• Participating in continuous product innovation by driving a tight feedback loop between customer delivery and Knit's product team — surfacing gaps between Knit's AI output and human-researcher quality, documenting "last mile" needs (what happens after delivery to get a project truly "stakeholder ready"), and ensuring that feedback is shared back with the team and acted upon to close those gaps
• Partnering with the sales team on new business conversations — including scoping calls, capabilities presentations, and proposal input — to support successful Pilot to Subscription Conversions and new logo acquisition
• Helping drive research team adoption of Knit’s product as new workflows and tooling become available

About you:

• Must have 10+ years of market research experience, including at least 3 years of team management experience, with the majority of the time spent on the supplier side in a market research agency environment.
• Must have experience leading discovery and scoping calls, writing and editing quant and qual questionnaires from scratch, drafting analysis plans, and creating and presenting stakeholder-ready insights topline & reports.
• Ability to drive initiatives and outcomes in ambiguous environments, both for navigating complex customer needs and Knit internal business changes. Proven track record successfully operating in an early stage startup (<50 employees) is a plus.
• Proven track record of owning client relationships with customers at Enterprise, Fortune 500 US-based companies, specifically working with insights professionals to scope and achieve desired research outcomes, resulting in customer retention and growth.
• Ability to drive initiatives and outcomes successfully in environments with competing priorities, multiple research projects on at a given time, and simultaneous internal business demands.
• Effective People Manager - specifically in driving clarity and accountability, hiring, onboarding, performance management, conflict resolution, and morale building.

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 Company Values

We are the Championship Team. This means we:

• Are 1% better every day: We approach situations with a growth mindset and ask, “How can we make the business better?” and “What would it take?”
• Play to win: We set audacious goals and push ourselves to achieve them with a bias towards action (When we see a need, we take initiative, and hold ourselves accountable to seeing it through).
• Keep the main thing the main thing: Identify what has the biggest impact and prioritize to focus on it.