Research Operations Lead, Justworks
Fixed Term
$190-235.5k
Business operations platform
Open for applications
Business operations platform
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$190-235.5k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To help entrepreneurs and businesses grow with confidence.
Role
Who you are
- Strategic and systems thinking — You connect a recruiting pain point to a knowledge gap to a missed business decision and design a coherent operational response. You build for today and architect for scale
- Consultative — You build relationships, understand problems, and co-design solutions through open-ended questions and active listening. You don't impose systems — you build them with the people who'll use them
- Autonomous and self-directed — You operate with minimal oversight, proactively identifying what needs to happen and making it happen. You own the strategy and are accountable for outcomes
- Stakeholder influence — You build trust and alignment across Research, Design, Product, Engineering, Marketing, Legal, Compliance, and Procurement — making the case for infrastructure investment with data and story
- Ethical practice — You bring care and rigor to participant privacy, data governance, and research ethics. Good operations protect people, not just processes
- AI-forward — You ask of every workflow: what requires human judgment, and what can be automated? You don't just use AI tools — you build with them, replacing manual work with intelligent automation
- Proven track record (6-8 years, with demonstrated experience at a staff or principal level) of building and scaling operational systems and governance structures - ideally in the context of market or UX research
- Experience working in a technology environment, including a deep understanding of experience design, user research, and product development processes
- Exposure to research methods in UX, market research, design research, and/or strategic research, and an interest in going deeper
- Experience applying AI tools and building AI-powered workflows — for knowledge retrieval, research synthesis, automation, or insight distribution
- Strong cross-functional partnership and lateral leadership skills, with experience working across Product, Design, Marketing, Engineering, Legal, Compliance, and Procurement
- Track record of operating independently in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
- Experience with research and insight management platforms such as Great Question, Qualtrics, Dovetail, User Interviews, dscout, and Figma
- Background in compliance-sensitive environments (e.g., fintech, SaaS, enterprise B2B) is a strong plus
What the job involves
- As a Research team, we're evolving how we work, investing in Insights Fluency for all Justworkers, and building an operational foundation that can scale with us
- You’ll build research systems that scale, working with significant autonomy, setting direction rather than just executing on it, and partnering closely with leadership to shape how insight drives decisions at Justworks for years to come
- You're comfortable in the strategic weeds of research methodology, and you thrive in architecting the systems, tools, and workflows that make research and strategic insight possible at scale
- You've built ResearchOps infrastructure before — and you know that the future isn't just about process documentation and vendor contracts. You approach every workflow with a clarifying question: what truly needs human judgment here, and what can be automated? The answer shapes everything — from how insights reach the people who need them, to how any Justworker can access what we know and act on it, to how we scale research and strategy from specialized practices into organization-wide capabilities
- Lead research operations. Define the vision, roadmap, and OKRs for Research & Insights operations in close partnership with the Senior Director. Identify where shared vs. dedicated infrastructure creates the most leverage, translate it into a sequenced operating plan you own end to end, and track metrics to demonstrate impact and drive improvement
- Transform our participant recruitment infrastructure. Design and scale a system that gives researchers — and Justworkers Who Do Research (JWDR) — reliable, ethical, and efficient access to customers. Move us from ad hoc to repeatable to self-service
- Harness our research community. Define where researchers' involvement creates the most leverage and build the coordination systems that make their contributions scalable. The goal: an ops practice owned by the whole community, not dependent on any one person
- Define our research ethics and data governance standards. Own the frameworks, consent workflows, and privacy practices that ensure all research at Justworks meets our standards for participant trust and data protection
- Automate everything that doesn't need a human. Design and build AI-powered agents and workflows that handle what doesn't require human expertise: surfacing prior research, routing insights, synthesizing patterns, scheduling participants, distributing the drumbeat of insight. The goal is to free researchers and Justworkers to focus on work only humans can do
- Increase insights fluency across the organization
- Build the operational backbone for our Insights Fluency program. EvolveDevelop the playbooks, tools, templates, and training that empower Justworkers across the company to conduct research responsibly and effectively
- Connect every Justworker to insight and strategy. Build the channels, automations, and workflows that automatically route the right insight to the right person at the right time. Partner with Corporate Strategy so every Justworker understands where the company is headed — anchoring decisions in strategy, not just intuition
- Establish and govern our Research Knowledge Orchestration system. Build a living repository that makes it easy for anyone to find what we know, with metadata frameworks and freshness policies that keep it trustworthy over time
Our take
Justworks operates in an increasingly crowded space of all-in-one business operation suites, that include tools like human resources, payroll, employee management, benefits, and others that businesses critically need to operate as they scale.
Globally, human resource management has become an extremely fertile field, creating great opportunity for Justworks to continue to grow. The company is regarded as a market leader, but does see competition in the shape of Paychex Flex, Rippling, Paylocity, and TriNet, among others.
Justworks' solutions have proven extremely popular with SMEs, and this has not gone unnoticed by investors - with the company picking up considerable amounts of funding. The company is known to have sights on going public, though these were delayed somewhat by market conditions. That said, it has continued to expand operations and acquired Via in 2024, signalling that its going strong.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
24% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Nov 2023
$16.9m
LATE VC
Jan 2020
$50m
SERIES E
Total funding: $159.9m
Company benefits
- Paid volunteer work
- Paid parental leave
- Work from home opportunities
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance, plus access to One Medical, Kindbody, and Teladoc
- Premium access to Headspace, ClassPass stipends, and webinars to support your overall wellness on topics like nutrition, budgeting, mindfulness, and more
- All Justworks offers include equity, and Justworkers can continue to earn more over time with promotions and tenure
- Extensive learning & development opportunities through workshops, ExecOnline, Udemy, and BetterUp coaching
- Apprenticeship program that supports internal movement and growth
Company HQ
Fulton Ferry District, NY
Leadership
Isaac Oates
(Founder & Director)Experience as a Senior Product Manager at Amazon before founding Adtuitive and serving as COO for a year. Left this position to spend 3 years as a VP at Etsy, before founding Justworks.
Salary benchmarks
We don't have enough data yet to provide salary benchmarks for this role.
Submit your salary to help other candidates with crowdsourced salary estimates.
Share this job
View 62 more jobs at Justworks