Sr. Research Associate

Expa; United States; Remote; USD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical

Dental

Vision

401(k) matching

Job summary

Expa Affiliate is seeking a Senior Research Associate who can tackle diverse questions with clear, well-sourced answers. You’ll run open-ended research, build competitive matrices, and deliver actionable briefs for senior leaders. You’ll leverage AI tools to move faster and may create lightweight scrapers or trackers.

Remote-friendly in the US with opportunities for travel to Los Angeles. The role rewards curiosity, critical thinking, and a strong writer who can synthesize complex landscapes

Qualifications

• 2–5 years of experience and a bachelor's degree
• Strong writing ability and clarity in communication
• AI-native and comfortable using a range of AI tools
• Able to work autonomously, ask questions, and iterate
• Comfortable with ambiguity and startup environment

Responsibilities

• Run open-ended research projects using the internet as your primary tool: markets, products, companies, funding activity, competitive landscapes, people, technologies, regulation — whatever the question requires.
• Turn messy findings into clean outputs: matrices, comparison tables, briefs, landscape maps, one-pagers.
• Go deep enough to have a point of view, not just a link dump — flag what matters, what's uncertain, and what you'd look at next.
• Use AI tools aggressively to move faster and go wider than a person could alone.
• Build lightweight tools, scrapers, or trackers when a project calls for it.
• Juggle several unrelated requests at once and reprioritize when things shift.

Skills

Research skills

AI tools proficiency

Strong writing

Self-direction

Startup mindset

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Claude

Cowork

ChatGPT

Gemini

Hugging Face

Job description

About Us

We are a private design studio that builds and supports a portfolio of companies and projects across software, hardware, hospitality, and more. Some of what we build stays in house; some spins out. We also run an early-stage investment fund and an accompanying cohort program for founders. This company is not Expa, but is an affiliate of Expa's.

The Role

We're looking for a Senior Research Associate who can find out anything about anything. Leadership will come to you with questions — size this market, map the players in this category, who's funding what, what the landscape looks like for XYZ — and you'll come back with an answer that's clear, well-sourced, and actually useful.

Some weeks that means building a competitive matrix across 40 companies. Some weeks it means a deep dive into a single obscure question nobody has written about yet. The projects change, the subject matter changes, and the volume varies week to week.

You'll be exposed to a lot of different projects and ideas, and work directly with a highly accomplished leader and team. If you're the kind of person who reads everything, asks a lot of questions, and wants to be in the room with people operating at a very high level, this is built for you.

What You'll Do

• Run open-ended research projects using the internet as your primary tool: markets, products, companies, funding activity, competitive landscapes, people, technologies, regulation — whatever the question requires.
• Turn messy findings into clean outputs: matrices, comparison tables, briefs, landscape maps, one-pagers.
• Go deep enough to have a point of view, not just a link dump — flag what matters, what's uncertain, and what you'd look at next.
• Use AI tools aggressively to move faster and go wider than a person could alone.
• Build lightweight tools, scrapers, or trackers when a project calls for it.
• Juggle several unrelated requests at once and reprioritize when things shift.

What We're Looking For

• 2–5 years of experience and a bachelor's degree — you take a task and run with it, but you've got the reps to produce senior-level output: quick turnaround, sharp judgment calls, and less hand-holding needed along the way.
• Brain power: sharp, curious, and able to reason through a question you've never seen before.
• AI-native: You live in AI tools — Claude and Cowork, ChatGPT, Gemini, Hugging Face, whatever's newest. Ideally you can vibe code your way to a working script or prototype without waiting on an engineer. Bonus points if you've hit your usage limit more than once.
• Comfortable in ambiguity: Vague briefs don't paralyze you. You take a first pass, come back with questions, and iterate.
• Self-directed but coachable: You think independently, but you want to learn from people far ahead of you and take direction well.
• Startup-minded: You're not looking for a corporate ladder. You want interesting problems, smart people, and range.
• A strong writer: Your research is only as good as your ability to communicate it in a page or less.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: The anticipated base salary range for this position is $100,000-$130,000. Actual compensation will be determined based on factors including experience, qualifications, level, and location.
• Benefits: Generous benefits package including medical, dental, and vision, 401(k) matching
• Location: Can be remote in the US, with significant travel to Los Angeles