Knit - Research Director

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.OverviewThe purpose of the Research Director role is to ensure Knit customers successfully achieve their desired research outcomes through their partnerships with Knit. By owning customer relationships, getting deeply engrained in customer research needs, and driving high-quality project deliverables, the Research Director’s impact is ultimately measured by positive customer retention and expansion.Responsibilities | 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 Research Director role owns to influence these key business objectives are:Research Success → Ensuring Knit Customers 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 of this role:Serving as the dedicated research lead for all customers’ projects (on assigned accounts) and serving as the ultimate accountable party for research project successDriving and documenting in-depth project scoping to uncover a deep understanding of research objectives and project context to set up project successDriving as the strategic problem solver and research subject matter expert partner for customers, effectively being able to propose solutions to business & research needsDriving as a solutions architect for customers, educating them on Knit’s research capabilities, consulting with them to adjust for fringe requirements, and proposing solutions to maximize project successDriving, maintaining, and enriching all customer context to improve Knit’s ability to meet the customers’ custom research needsParticipating in continuous innovation on Knit’s AI product to minimize the delta between Knit’s AI output and a human researcher outputBeing the final, customer-ready check and approver on all Knit final topline delivery and presenting the key insights and recommendations directly to the customersDriving on feedback collection on “the last mile” - uncovering and documenting what happens after Knit delivers a project to when it’s “stakeholder ready,” supporting Knit’s product vision in getting to stakeholder ready reportsSuccessful & effective people management of direct reports, 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.)Required Skills & ExperiencesRequired:Must have 8+ years of market research 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 (