Job Description:

Strategic Imperative:

The Associate Director, Research Solutions, is a critical operational leader within Prodege's Research Solutions Project Management Team. This role translates strategic direction into daily execution while actively developing the systems, people, and processes that allow the team to scale. This is a "player-coach" role: you are close enough to the work to understand its complexity, yet senior enough to drive meaningful operational improvements and represent the delivery function with internal and external stakeholders.

***We are seeking applicants located in the Eastern Time Zone or willing to work Eastern Time Zone hours***

Primary Objectives:

• Operational Excellence & Process Improvement
• People Management & Team Health
• Financial & Commercial Awareness
• Technical Oversight & Quality Assurance
• Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Communication

Qualifications - To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each job duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Detailed Job Duties: (typical monthly, weekly, daily tasks which support the primary objectives)

• Directly manage a team of project managers and/or team leads, providing clear direction, meaningful feedback, and consistent coaching. You are the day-to-day manager your team relies on, while the Director focuses on broader organizational design
• Ensure your team's deliverables consistently meet Prodege's quality standards. Establish checkpoints and review habits. Quality assurance is not a reactive function on your team; it is at the core of how we work.
• Translate the Research Solutions Group's goals into concrete, actionable plans for your team.
• Identify recurring friction points or bottlenecks in processes and propose well-researched, solution-oriented approaches focused on automation and scalability over manual workarounds.
• Champion the adoption of Standard Operating Procedures across your team and peer groups.
• Communicate clearly and confidently with clients, internal partners, and leadership. You are comfortable presenting delivery updates, project health summaries, or operational challenges
• Model the Prodege Way in every interaction - from handling a client escalation to giving feedback in a team meeting. You set the tone for what "white-glove delivery" looks like in practice, and you hold the team to that standard with both empathy and accountability
• Develop a working fluency in how delivery decisions impact gross margin. You actively identify opportunities within the projects you oversee to reduce costs. Through smarter project structuring, better use of automation, or resource optimization, you can identify patterns or trends and escalate them.
• Act as a connector between the US-based project management team and offshore operations, ensuring client needs are met or exceeded.
• Support vendor relationships for day-to-day delivery needs (e.g., translation agencies, open-ended coding providers). Surface feedback to key stakeholders.
• Partner with Sales and Account Management on mid-to-high complexity RFP responses and scoping conversations, providing operational input on feasibility, timelines, and delivery risk
• Develop training materials and conduct training sessions for your team as needed.

Additional Management Responsibilities:

• Performance Management: conducting regular 1:1s, setting and managing goals, on-going coaching, corrective action, annual reviews, rewards/recognition, and team/individual development
• Employee Life Cycle Management: headcount forecasting, job descriptions, recruiting/hiring, termination
• Governance: ensuring compliance with company policy/practice (e.g. attendance, behavior, workplace attire), ensuring compliance with employment law (e.g. time keeping, anti-harassment and diversity)
• Leadership: ensures availability to staff, team building, building rapport with individuals, encouraging strong collaborative relationships between individuals and departments, facilitating a healthy work/life mix, solicits and applies feedback (internal and external to team), self-improvement as a leader/manager of people
• Culture Ambassador: proactively demonstrate and cultivate a culture of cooperative collaboration, strong work ethic, solutions-orientation, quality focus, results-orientation, relaxed/enjoyable atmosphere, team- and individual- celebration, and company/product pride

The MUST Haves: (ex: job cannot be done without these skills, education, experience, certifications, licenses)

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience.
• Eight or more (8+) years of market research experience, ideally within the project management function or with relevant experience of managing research projects from inception to completion
• Five or more (5+) years of leading a team and managing direct reports
• Market Research Expertise: Knowledge of market research concepts within the quantitative online market research stages.
• People Management: Experience managing people, developing their skills and competencies as well as fostering a collaborative and high-performance culture
• Effective Communication and Relationship Building Skills: Ability to communicate verbally and in writing with various audiences, build strong relationships with our clients, various internal stakeholders, and our globally dispersed team.
• Meticulous Operational & Project Management: Highly organized with strong follow-through, solid time management, and multitasking skills. Sound knowledge of project management concepts and tools; ensuring meticulous attention to detail, quality of deliverables and timelines.
• Analytical Acumen and Critical Thinking: Strong analytical aptitude, results-oriented, and sound critical thinking abilities to proactively identify issues, provide solutions and ensure accuracy across all project deliverables.
• Technical Proficiency: Proficient with G-Suite (GMail, Docs, Sheets etc.) as well as the Microsoft Office Suite. Familiarity with survey scripting tools (e.g. Decipher, Qualtrics, Confirmit)
• Client & Internal Relationship Building: Collaborate in a global team environment and across teams while working remotely. Ability to travel approx 10% domestically and internationally for in-person client meetings.

The Nice to Haves:

• Familiarity with CRM-based solutions (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce) and Data Visualization tools (e.g., Crunch, Tableau, Infotools).
• Familiarity with Qualitative Research.

Pay Transparency:

The anticipated base salary range for this position is $115,000 to $140,000. The final salary offered to a successful candidate will be dependent on several factors that may include, but are not limited to; the type and length of experience within the job, type and length of experience within the industry, the type and length of knowledge and skills for the position, education, training, etc. Prodege is a multi-state employer and final compensation within this range could be impacted by work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus, equity, or benefits.

Prodege Benefits:

Prodege offers a comprehensive benefits package to US Full-time employees including medical, dental, vision, STD, LTD and basic life insurance. Employees receive flexible PTO, as well as paid sick leave prorated based on hire date. US Employees have eight paid holidays throughout the calendar year.