Research Operations Lead - AI Tools & Scale

Blue Line Search Group; San Francisco, Sunnyvale (CA, CA); On-site; USD 209,000 - 307,000; Full time

Job summary

DoorDash is seeking a Research Operations Manager to serve as the operational backbone of our research group, driving scalability and a culture of experimentation. You’ll own vendor relationships, budgets, and AI-powered tooling that puts real user voices in front of product teams.

You’ll partner with researchers, engineering, and design to deploy pragmatic tools, streamline recruiting, and foster a systems-thinking mindset that detects friction and removes it at scale.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in research operations, UX operations, or a closely related role.
• Experience managing contractors or full-time employees, including setting priorities, providing feedback, supporting development, and ensuring delivery.
• Demonstrated experience managing research vendors and procurement processes.
• Experience owning and forecasting operational or project budgets.
• Experience with research repositories and recruiting platforms (UserTesting, Qualtrics, etc.).
• Familiarity with prompt engineering or working with LLMs in a research or operations context. You don't need to code, but you're excited to build tools using AI and have strong intuitions about what to build and when.
• A systems thinker who can zoom out to see inefficiencies and zoom in to fix them.
• Strong communicator who can influence without authority and build trust across research, product, and engineering teams.
• High degree of self-direction. You spot problems before they're surfaced to you and move quickly to address them.

Responsibilities

• Vendor & Procurement Management: Own the end-to-end lifecycle of research vendor relationships — from sourcing and evaluation through contract negotiation, onboarding, and ongoing performance review.
• Budget Management: Own the research team's budget: track spend, forecast needs, manage purchase orders, and ensure resources are allocated to the highest-impact work.
• Participant Recruiting: Lead the strategy and execution of participant recruiting across studies — managing panels, recruiting vendors, and internal databases to ensure the team has access to the right participants at the right time.
• AI-Powered Research Tooling: Partner with researchers, engineering, design to evaluate, build, maintain, and scale AI-based tools that accelerate the research process.
• Culture of Experimentation: Be a visible champion for experimentation within the research team. Run retrospectives, document and share learnings, and help the team build an institutional memory.
• Operations & Scalability: Design and maintain the operational infrastructure that keeps the research practice running smoothly: research repositories, documentation standards, onboarding materials, team rituals, and the tooling stack.

Skills

Research ops

Vendor management

Budget forecasting

Recruiting platforms

LLM / AI tools

Systems thinking

Stakeholder influence

Self-directed

Tools

UserTesting

Qualtrics

Job description

DoorDash is seeking a Research Operations Manager to serve as the operational backbone of our research group, driving scalability and a culture of experimentation. You’ll own vendor relationships, budgets, and AI-powered tooling that puts real user voices in front of product teams.

You’ll partner with researchers, engineering, and design to deploy pragmatic tools, streamline recruiting, and foster a systems-thinking mindset that detects friction and removes it at scale.