Qualitative Insight Director — Hybrid Research Leader

MERGE; St. Louis (MO); Hybrid; USD 114,000 - 168,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

Life Insurance

401K

Lifestyle Spending Account

Flexible Time off

Job summary

MERGE is seeking a Qualitative Insight Director in the St. Louis area to lead strategy, research design, and stakeholder alignment across health-focused marketing and technology projects.

You will translate findings into actionable strategy, guide research tooling, and mentor teams to produce compelling client deliverables. The role requires 5+ years in market research or agency settings, a strong moderation background, travel flexibility, and strict adherence to industry regulations and ethics.

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience moderating and delivering excellent client deliverables in a market research or agency setting
• Aligns with, Models, and Coaches our values: People, Commitment, Aspiration, Trustworthiness & Impact
• Willingness to travel and be flexible in scheduling to accommodate project needs
• Compliance in time-tracking
• Adhere with all Merge and client required training and guidelines for market research and healthcare industry regulations and laws. Specifically (but not limited to) Pharmacovigilance (PV) and Healthcare Providers (HCPs) processes and reporting, Ethics, Confidentiality, Data Privacy / Security and Harassment

Responsibilities

• Accountable for ensuring all aspects of the project are delivered on time and against client objectives.
• Consistently thinks proactively throughout the project to anticipate and quickly address changes to approach, design, objectives, etc.
• Effectively designs studies and writes proposals.
• Thoughtfully crafts questionnaires / discussion guides with appropriate techniques and activities, and structures of questions that better address objectives and fit with participant type.
• Effectively moderates 1:1 and group interviews and online engagements (Communities, Remesh, etc.), spending typically 20% of their time doing live moderation.
• Able to facilitate discussion on any topic, with any target, and have the know-how to go off-guide, where appropriate.
• Creatively and quickly connect the dots, identifying emerging themes and how they connect to the bigger story.
• Consistently incorporates strategic elements into the report including the story flow, emerging implications (so-what), and recommendations (now-what).
• Appropriately adds visual elements to communicate the story.
• Begins to leverage client / industry knowledge and external frameworks to elevate the strategy.
• Writes succinctly, to the audience, with clarity, conviction, and tension as well as polish and professionalism.
• Client relationships: Commands a confident, captivating, respectful, agile, consultative presence when engaging with the client.
• Develops rapport and builds empathy for and with the client, leading to long-term relationships.
• Develops and continually deepens understanding of the client's business and the individual client to ask the right questions, anticipate needs.
• Proactively addresses issues or opportunities in their business, including further research or strategy work.
• Stays calm and collected even with difficult clients, and helps the team do the same.
• Insight department leadership: Supports department specific initiatives.
• Provides guidance and mentorship to team members assigned to their projects.
• Is an outstanding strategic thinker, writer, and presenter.
• Their work should always produce results — be it positive client feedback, referrals, repeat business or case studies.
• Develops positive relationships with clients and other Merge teams.

Skills

Research design

Qualitative research

Moderation

Strategic thinking

Communication

Stakeholder management

Tools

Remesh

Communities

Job description

MERGE is seeking a Qualitative Insight Director in the St. Louis area to lead strategy, research design, and stakeholder alignment across health-focused marketing and technology projects.

You will translate findings into actionable strategy, guide research tooling, and mentor teams to produce compelling client deliverables. The role requires 5+ years in market research or agency settings, a strong moderation background, travel flexibility, and strict adherence to industry regulations and ethics.