Description
You already know you're good.
You've been doing the interviews, writing the synthesis, producing the decks nobody read closely enough. Somewhere along the way you've had the thought: I have more to give than this. You want to be in rooms where decisions are made. You want the people making those decisions to know your name and trust what you bring.
That place exists. This is it.
What You're Walking Into
Zywave is building agentic AI products that are reshaping how insurance brokers find clients, advise them, and grow their business. Research here is not a support function. AI gets research output to good quickly. The researcher gets the organization to great. Without that step, faster delivery just means mediocrity at scale. That's what this role prevents.
The product design team is small, sharp, and moving at the pace the business demands. The VP of Product Design is a builder who works in weeks, not quarters. The Chief Product Officer has board-level interest in what research produces. You will be in rooms with both of them, expected to contribute -- not as support staff, but as someone with a point of view and the standing to express it.
You won't have that standing on day one. You'll earn it. But the path is real, and the manager you report to will be walking it with you.
How This Role Works
The scope starts constrained: one product domain, a focused set of relationships, foundational skills sharpened in context. That's not a ceiling. It's a foundation.
As you demonstrate capability and build relational trust, the aperture widens. From executing research to shaping how research gets done. From presenting findings to setting the frame of the conversation. From being introduced to stakeholders to being the person they call directly.
To the team, your presence in the room is the asset, not your reports. The goal is to become the person whose absence from the room is felt.
Your manager's role in your first year is active and personal. You will be accompanied, challenged, and invested in as you grow.
What you owe in return: show up with everything you have. Take initiative before you're asked. Tell us when something isn't working. And when you see something worth chasing that nobody asked you to look at, chase it.
What You Bring
Foundational research skills. Study design, recruiting, moderated and unmoderated testing, synthesis. Solid in the fundamentals and hungry to expand. Research is how you build the expertise that makes you indispensable in the room -- not the deliverable you hand off and move on from.
A point of view. You interpret findings, not just report them. You have a recommendation, even a tentative one, and you're willing to defend it.
Full context orientation. You don't wait for research requests. The researcher who already knows the business goals, the metrics, the roadmap, the blockers doesn't need to be handed a question. They already know what needs to be answered.
Comfort with AI as a collaborator. You're already experimenting, not waiting for permission. You have stories about what's worked and what hasn't. You think about where AI judgment is useful and where it needs a human.
Adaptability. Methods, tools, and questions are all evolving simultaneously here. You're energized by that, not destabilized.
The ambition to be in the room. To contribute, to set the frame, to be the person whose analysis actually changed something. That ambition might feel a little scary right now. The hunger is what we're looking for.
What You Don't Need
A five-year resume. Expertise in every method. A background in insurance.
You need to be ready to learn fast and show up as someone who wants to be here.
The Environment
Zywave is a B2B SaaS company of roughly 1,000 people with employees across the US, UK, India, and the Philippines. This is a fully remote role. The research team is small with direct visibility across product leadership.
This role has a companion document -- a researcher expansion path -- that maps what the job becomes as you grow into it. We'll share it when we talk.
