Panel Community Manager (Market Research)

Highlight; United States; Remote; USD 92,000 - 115,000; Full time

Job summary

Highlight is seeking a Panel Manager to lead the growth and engagement of its product tester community. This role involves strategic planning, community operations management, and implementing initiatives to enhance community interaction and satisfaction, crucial for driving product testing success. Ideal candidates will possess robust experience in customer support and strategic management, aiming to foster a delightful community experience.

Benefits

Health insurance (medical, dental, vision) with 100% of premiums covered

Unlimited PTO

Flexible, remote WFH culture

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience in Panel Management or Customer Support at a market research or software company.
• Experience building marketing campaigns for community growth.
• Ability to extract insights and make data-driven decisions.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the community strategy to drive engagement and feedback quality.
• Oversee community operations, including support ticket resolution and member communications.
• Establish reporting systems to track community KPIs.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Project management

Problem resolution

Community engagement

Analytical mindset

Tools

Freshdesk

Zendesk

Slack

Mailchimp

Job description

Who We Are

30,000 products are launched every year, and 90% of them fail. Highlight is the first and only end-to-end agile product testing platform, enabling the efficient collection of scaled product performance data. Brands like Nestle, P&G, and Estee Lauder rely on Highlight for competitive benchmarking, pre-launch formulation testing, in-market product renovation, and more, to optimize product success. Highlight, launched in 2021, has seen runaway growth and scale, having tested hundreds of products at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional analog methods, and becoming the dominant SaaS platform in the product testing space. Highlight is a woman-owned, minority-owned startup on a mission to create better products for people and the planet. We’re a diverse and collaborative team committed to fostering an environment of innovation, impact, and growth.

Highlight is looking for a Panel Manager to lead the strategic growth, health, and engagement of our Highlight Community of product testers. As a key member of the Operations Team, the Panel Manager will oversee the systems, processes, and initiatives that ensure our Highlighters are sharing quality and thoughtful feedback. This role is both strategic and hands-on; guiding the operational success of the community, managing team members, and championing best practices that elevate community experience and client deliverables. They will take ownership of key performance indicators for community health and serve as the internal voice of our Highlighters.

Our ideal candidate will have strong strategic thinking, project management, and problem resolution skills. You are driven to create tools, best practices, and methods that support process efficiency, community engagement, and high data quality. You are comfortable in an environment where adapting to changing priorities to meet multiple project timelines is a regular occurrence. You will work across the organization alongside customer enablement, sales, marketing, engineering, and product teams. This role comes with the opportunity to explore different initiatives and methodologies to better the Highlight Community.

Your Impact

• Own and evolve the overarching panel (community) strategy to drive engagement, feedback quality, and long-term satisfaction in close collaboration with the product team.
• Oversee day-to-day community operations, including support ticket resolution, member communications, and quality assurance.
• Identify and implement scalable processes and automation tools to optimize support and survey workflows.
• Develop and execute community growth initiatives, including referral programs, social media engagement (i.e., ad campaigns), and retention strategies.
• Build and maintain reporting systems to track community KPIs (e.g., engagement rates, satisfaction, completion rates) and drive data-informed decisions.
• Serve as the internal advocate for Highlighters—surfacing trends, pain points, and ideas to influence product and customer experience strategies.
• Collaborate with the Operations team to refine tooling, infrastructure, and policies that promote community health and data quality.
• Establish and document best practices and playbooks for community operations, engagement, and communications.
• Foster a positive, inclusive, and responsive culture within the Highlighter Community.

About You

• 5+ years of experience in Panel Management or Customer Support (B2C) at a market research company and/or software company (preferably an early-stage startup)
• Experience using customer support tech platforms, such as Freshdesk, Zendesk, Slack, Sendinblue, Mailchimp, Ad Campaigns, Rybbon
• Experience building marketing campaigns for community growth and health
• Experience building and tracking systems to report KPIs
• Deep understanding of how to foster and create a delightful community experience
• A keen eye for efficiency and the experience to know how and when to optimize internal processes with no-code automations, integrations, and documentation
• An analytical mindset with the ability to extract insights and make data-driven decisions
• Eager to learn, committed to getting 1% better every day, and open to feedback
• Passion for innovation, sparking new ideas and fostering new ways for brands and consumers to work together

Benefits

• Health insurance (medical, dental, vision) with 100% of employee premiums covered
• Unlimited PTO
• Flexible, remote WFH culture
• Access to the iconic Hearst Tower & its facilities in NYC (should you choose to ever be in person)
• Based on previous experience and skillset, the starting salary range for this position: $92,000 - $115,000 annually

You don’t need to meet every qualification listed to apply—we value potential, curiosity, and diverse perspectives. At Highlight, we believe that innovation thrives when different experiences and ideas come together. We’re committed to building an inclusive team where individuals of all backgrounds - including but not limited to - race, age, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, disability, veteran status, and more—feel empowered to contribute and grow.

If you’re a critical thinker who’s not afraid to challenge assumptions, we’d love to hear from you. We’re a passionate, supportive team that putsHumans First, cares about each other, and yes—we take our tacos seriously.