Manager, Research Operations
Job description
About Zilker Trail
We help daring digital leaders build better experiences and deliver outcomes through technical hands-on delivery services aimed at developing winning strategies that are often proven out through continuous testing & personalization. Every idea, every product, every experience – driven by data. Imagine that. That’s Zilker Trail.
Headquartered in Austin, TX, Zilker Trail was founded in 2022 by 2x digital agency owners and former client-side executives obsessed with the intersection of data, innovation and growth. Today, we provide product development, design, research, analytics, engineering, strategic consulting solutions grounded in pioneering personalization and AB testing expertise. Our diverse roster of F500 clients has included DTC brands, Consumer Technology, Insurance, Airlines, Hotels, Professional Sports, and Grocery.
We employ a thoughtful process with decades of operational experience in digital business and analytics to help our clients make insights-led decisions on how to accelerate their digital businesses. With an emphasis on simplicity of process, elegance of information design, and application of lean startup principles, we teach “middle-brained” leaders how to simultaneously be goal-oriented, problem-focused, and hypothesis-led, and data-driven.
Job Description
Research is baked into everything we do at Zilker and is at the core of what we deliver to our clients every day. The research team’s mission is to deliver robust, actionable insights to our clients at every stage of the product development lifecycle. As the Manager of Research Operations, you will manage and recruit panelists for our research engagements. You will work with a variety of clients and with a cross-functional team at Zilker Trail that consists of product strategists, designers, analysts, and engineers. You support a wide variety of clients, as well as Zilker researchers, in managing complex and varied study recruits.
Your work is detail-oriented and focused on finding high quality research participants, working hands-on with clients to drive meaningful insights by supporting their recruitment needs. If desired, there are additional opportunities to conduct research as part of career development.
Your Day
- Partner with our Fortune 500 clients and our Senior Research Consultants to manage user panel recruitment based on client criteria for use in surveys, moderated or unmoderated research studies
- Develop screening criteria and screening surveys to identify the right people for participation in research
- Proactively create and manage templates for crisp delivery, business development, and client status meetings
- Build out the strategy for Participant Management and Panel Health and execute it (i.e., develop new recruiting channels, mechanisms, and best practices; track panel composition and recommend strategic recruits based on upcoming projects or gaps identified; closely monitor panel engagement levels for purge and refresh efforts)
- Inform and participate in timeline and delivery decisions for client engagements, working both at a strategic and tactical level to support them in accomplishing their customized recruit or panel development needs
- Design advertisements and identify the right target communities online to find high quality participants
- Work with spreadsheets, survey platforms, and UserTesting to collect and manage research recruits
- Support UX Researchers in their day-to-day activities – assist with challenging recruiting, troubleshoot tools, etc
- Build and maintain research operations metrics
- Design and implement processes for the research operations practice
- Develop and manage documentation about research operations processes, recruitment best practices, and client-facing documentation about recruitment services
- Clearly identify, explain, and communicate progress, status, expectations, dependencies, and risks to various stakeholders while managing overall risks for projects, driving commitments to schedule and quality
Desired Profile
Basic qualifications:
- Minimum of three (3) years experience working in research operations with panel management, panel recruitment and internal operations.
- One (1) year experience with UserTesting.
- Minimum one (1) year experience in project management.
- Minimum of one (1) year experience in an agency or client-facing environment.
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience.
Set yourself apart: preferred requirements
- Problem solver extraordinaire. You create solutions, not problems. You use empathy, logic and imagination to make sense of a situation and come up with an intelligent solution.
- Organized and love yourself for it. You love creating (and completing!) tasks lists. You hate messes. You possess excellent planning & organization skills.
- Communicator Extraordinaire. Intuitive, adaptable, and collaborative. You demonstrate excellent stakeholder management and presentation skills.
- Expectations wizard. You always under-promise and over-deliver.
- Agile. You have an innate ability to embrace change and quickly adapt to new situations, changes in directions and competing priorities within a result-driven environment. You know how to learn fast with the goal of operating independently without sacrificing a quality output.
- Proactive. You are experienced at identifying risks and resolving issues, escalating a need to leadership or another researcher on the team as needed.
- Live in the details. Solid problem-solving skills with a high attention to the little things. You bring clarity to chaos.
- Industry experience with digital products, especially research and survey tools.
- Comfortable in ambiguous, fast-paced environments where accountability, creativity, adaptability and collaboration is key.
To be part of Zilker Trail is to be….
Curious. We value sincere interest in what makes things tick – people, businesses, products & designs. We want to understand the what and the why of every problem we solve.
Open. We value transparency with our employees, our clients and our partners. We want to invite you all into this experiment.
Confident. We trust that our recommendations are likely to succeed on the basis of data. We are not afraid to disrupt, change or fail fast in pursuit of greatness.
Appreciative. We value our time together – the work and the play– with the co-workers, partners & clients we admire and enjoy.
Balanced . We endeavor to find that magical intersection at the corners of inspiration & pragmatism; design & data; work, play & family; urgency & patience; and innovation & evidence.