Senior Survey Design & Methodology Specialist

Obsidian; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Mercor, in partnership with a leading AI research organisation, seeks experienced professionals in survey research, market research, consumer insights, and behavioural science to evaluate and improve sophisticated survey-based research.

You will review methodological quality, sampling bias, and questionnaire structure, while applying practical judgment to ambiguous design problems and explaining reasoning with clear rationales.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional experience in survey research, market research, consumer insights, behavioural science, UX research, or a closely related field.
• Meaningful hands-on experience designing and/or fielding surveys professionally.
• Strong understanding of questionnaire design and common sources of survey error and bias.
• Experience with respondent panels, sampling strategies, screeners, quotas, or survey fieldwork is highly valuable.
• Ability to critically evaluate survey methodology rather than execute a predefined questionnaire.
• Strong written communication skills and the ability to explain why a survey design decision is methodologically strong or weak.
• High attention to detail and comfort making nuanced judgments with incomplete or ambiguous information.
• Experience with platforms such as Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Alchemer, Decipher/Forsta, QuestionPro, or similar research tools is helpful but not required.

Responsibilities

• Review and evaluate surveys for methodological quality, clarity, and fitness for purpose.
• Assess survey questions for issues such as leading language, ambiguity, double-barreled questions, response-option problems, ordering effects, and respondent burden.
• Evaluate screeners, eligibility criteria, survey flows, skip/display logic, scales, and questionnaire structure.
• Identify potential sources of sampling, measurement, response, and selection bias.
• Assess whether surveys are likely to generate reliable and interpretable data from the intended respondent population.
• Review approaches to survey fielding, respondent recruitment, quotas, sample composition, and data-quality controls.
• Apply practical research judgment to ambiguous survey-design problems where there may not be a single objectively correct answer.
• Provide clear, structured rationales explaining methodological issues and recommended improvements.
• Help evaluate AI-generated survey content and research reasoning against professional research standards.

Skills

Market Research

Survey Methodology

Consumer Insights

Behavioural Science

UX Research

Polls / Opinion Research

Tools

Qualtrics

SurveyMonkey

Alchemer

Decipher/Forsta

QuestionPro

Job description

Mercor, in partnership with a leading AI research organisation, seeks experienced professionals in survey research, market research, consumer insights, and behavioural science to evaluate and improve sophisticated survey-based research.

You will review methodological quality, sampling bias, and questionnaire structure, while applying practical judgment to ambiguous design problems and explaining reasoning with clear rationales.