Research Manager

Spalding Goobey; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

Spalding Goobey Associates is seeking a Research Manager to lead social/public sector projects in a hybrid London setting. You will own projects end-to-end, coordinating client communications, survey design, fieldwork, and analysis to deliver impactful insights.

The role emphasizes ownership, thought leadership, and shaping a growing research team through mentoring and process improvement, with exposure to AI-enhanced methods.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of social or political primary research, in an agency or consultancy environment.
• Experience communicating with clients and contributing to proposals; seeking greater ownership.
• Knowledge of how to analyse using R or Python and comfort with AI in research workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery of research projects, including client management and scoping.
• Create surveys and manage fieldwork; perform analysis and deliver insight reports with presentation to clients.
• Lead client communications, identify opportunities for growth within existing accounts.
• Conduct own research, write thought leadership, and host events with stakeholders.
• Support senior team members with proposals and help build out the research function by training juniors.

Skills

Quantitative research

Qualitative research

Survey design

Client management

R/Python data analysis

AI in research workflows

Team leadership

Tools

R

Python

Job description

London (hybrid, 4 days per week in the office)

Fantastic opportunity for a Research Manager with a social / public background to make a real impact in a growing and dynamic agency. You’ll get the opportunity to work alongside a highly collaborative team of researchers, client leads, engineers, data scientists and product specialists. They do impactful work with leading organisations, from brands to third sector and philanthropic organisations, so if you want to use research to help foundations and non-profits change the world, this is a fantastic opportunity to get involved. Working on public opinion projects primarily with quantitative data, but the role will involve some qualitative research too.

If you’ve got around four years of social or political primary research and you’re ready to step up, sharpen your AI skills, help shape a growing team and drive where the sector is going, we’d love to hear from you.

You will have the opportunity to own research projects from start to finish and act as the key client contact for each of your projects as well as contribute to growing new business. To achieve this you will be responsible for the end-to-end delivery of projects, including client management, creation of surveys and fieldwork management, analysis and insight report creation and presentation, lead client comms and engagement and identify other opportunities for research to grow existing client accounts, run your own research, write thought leadership and host events with existing and potential new stakeholders, support senior team members with writing proposals, be involved in building out the research team by training junior team members and supporting the implementation of new processes and help develop new methods and improve research workflows to take advantage of advances in technology

This role will require someone who has already learned and successfully applied their quantitative research skills (survey-based primary research) in the social and political sector, in an agency or consultancy environment. You should have experience of communicating with clients and contributing to proposals but should now be looking for greater ownership and to be the key client lead on all your projects. Knowledge of how the analyse using R or Python and comfort with using AI in research workflows is required and a mixed-methods background that includes any form of qualitative interview experience is desirable.

The ideal candidate will have demonstrable critical thinking, a strong academic background, be self-driven and ambitious and want to learn new skills, enjoy working in a team and taking ownership, and be curious about what’s happening in the world.