Principal Research Ops: AI-Driven Participant Strategy

Fidelity Investments; Roanoke (TX); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Fidelity Investments seeks a Principal Research Operations professional to guide strategy and execution of participant recruitment for both B2C and B2B studies. You will build scalable panels, partner with researchers, vendors, and compliance teams, and explore AI-enabled approaches to participant sourcing.

With 8–10+ years in recruitment or UX research operations, you will shape when humans, synthetic participants, or hybrids are most effective while advancing responsible, high‑quality research

Qualifications

• 8–10+ years in participant recruitment, research operations, UX or market research.
• Deep expertise recruiting both B2C and B2B participants, including enterprise decision‑makers.
• Experience building, managing, scaling participant panels, communities, or databases.
• Proven success developing recruiting strategies for qualitative and quantitative research at scale.
• Experience managing recruiting vendors, providers, and sourcing partnerships.
• Hands‑on experience building, configuring, or deploying AI agents to automate workflows.
• Experience creating, evaluating, or utilizing synthetic users or AI‑generated models.
• Strong understanding of synthetic research opportunities and limitations.
• Experience developing frameworks for when human vs synthetic vs hybrid approaches are best.
• Familiarity with platforms like User Interviews, UserTesting, dscout, Respondent, Qualtrics.
• Strong communication, influence, and stakeholder management in regulated environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead strategy and execution of participant recruitment across B2C and B2B research.
• Serve as SME on sourcing, panel management, and recruiting best practices.
• Help establish AI-enabled research methodologies within a regulated framework.
• Collaborate with researchers, product, legal, and external vendors to build scalable participant strategies.
• Advance AI agents and synthetic users to accelerate learning and improve operations.

Skills

Participant recruitment

Panel management

UX research

AI in research

Stakeholder management

Vendor management

AI agents

Synthetic users

Hybrid research

Regulated industry

Tools

User Interviews

UserTesting

dscout

Respondent

Qualtrics

Job description

Fidelity Investments seeks a Principal Research Operations professional to guide strategy and execution of participant recruitment for both B2C and B2B studies. You will build scalable panels, partner with researchers, vendors, and compliance teams, and explore AI-enabled approaches to participant sourcing.

With 8–10+ years in recruitment or UX research operations, you will shape when humans, synthetic participants, or hybrids are most effective while advancing responsible, high‑quality research