Lead Researcher, Brand Performance & Cultural Insights

PrizePicks•Atlanta, GA

3d•$120,000 - $160,000•Remote

About The Position

PrizePicks is seeking a Lead Researcher to own the measurement, contextualization, and improvement of the company's brand performance and cultural position. This role involves complementing brand measurement with qualitative insights into consumer mindsets to identify shifts in fan behavior, the category, and the competitive landscape before they are reflected in performance data. The position operates as a high-impact individual contributor, managing the entire research process from problem framing to executive-ready recommendations. The Lead Researcher will partner directly with leaders and operators across various departments, owning stakeholder relationships and recommendations without intermediaries. The goal is to drive decisions at all levels of the company by providing fast, rigorous insights tied directly to business objectives.

Requirements

7+ years in market research or consumer insights where you can point to specific decisions that changed, dollars that moved, or directions that shifted because of work you owned end to end.
Equal command of quant and qual, hands-on. You design and run brand performance trackers that diagnose funnel conversion, not just report levels.
Program studies in Qualtrics (or similar), moderate communities, run digital ethnography, synthesize social and cultural listening (Quid, Brandwatch, Sprinklr, or similar), and write the recommendation that comes out the other side.
Working fluency with qualitative platforms (ListenLabs, dscout, Suzy), statistical tools (R or Python), and BI tools (Tableau, Looker, Power BI).
AI-fluency: You already use ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini in your research work today. You have a point of view on what AI changes about insights, and you can argue it.
Storyteller, not reporter: You move a finding from data to a business implication in under sixty seconds.
Your recommendations survive being read by an SVP between meetings and hold up when an IC has to execute against them.
Comfortable interacting with and challenging stakeholders at any level – exec or IC – when the evidence supports it.
Highly collaborative, never deferential: You build alignment with stakeholders rather than dropping reports on them, but you don’t soften the recommendation to make the room comfortable.
Stay accountable for the point of view, insight quality, and the follow-through.
Fearless curiosity: Relentlessly curious about how customers, fans, and subcultures actually behave. You can contextualize the people behind the data.
Must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.

Nice To Haves

Experience in daily fantasy, gaming, sports, sports media, or adjacent fan-driven consumer categories.
A clear point of view on what good brand performance and cultural research looks like and a track record of pushing back on requests that won’t change a decision.
Experience building or scaling research operations: processes, templates, trackers, dashboards, or self-serve tools that compounded the team’s leverage over time.

Responsibilities

Connect customer, brand, competitive, and cultural signals to PrizePicks’ business performance and decisions, driving major changes in what the company builds, how it shows up in market, how it invests, and where it should stop.
Own PrizePicks’ brand performance measurement end to end. Design and run the studies, synthesize the read, write and ship the recommendation, and follow the changes through until they land in product, brand, or growth decisions.
Own the cultural intelligence program end to end. Surveys, social and cultural listening, online communities, and qualitative work that surface shifts in fan behavior, gaming, sports, and adjacent subcultures before they show up in performance data.
Run quant and qual end to end, hands on. Design, program, field, and QA studies across brand tracking, segmentation, sizing, and concept and message testing in Qualtrics or comparable. Run qualitative across IDIs, focus groups, digital ethnography, communities, concept testing, and synthesis of social and cultural artifacts.
Synthesize outputs that move business performance. Define what is happening, why it matters, what leadership and operators should do next, and what to stop doing. Outputs without a recommendation are not complete work. The job isn’t done until the recommendation is in the hands of the people who can act on it.
Create strong, compelling project briefs that frame business problems as research solutions. Ask the questions stakeholders don’t know to ask. Push past surface-level requests to the underlying decision, and make sure every project is pointed at a real growth opportunity.
Partner directly with leaders and operators across Product, Design, Brand & Marketing, Retention & Lifecycle, Strategy, and Analytics. Recommend what to accelerate, deprioritize, or stop. Follow the recommendation through until it changes what the team is doing.

Benefits

Company-subsidized medical, dental, & vision plans
401(k) plan with company match
Annual bonus
Flexible PTO to encourage a healthy work/life balance (2 weeks STRONGLY encouraged!)
Generous paid leave programs, including 16-week paid parental leave and disability benefits
Workplace flexibility and modern work schedules focused on getting the job done, not hours clocked
Company-wide in-person events and team outings
Lifestyle enhancement program
Company equipment provided (Windows & Mac options)
Annual performance reviews with opportunities for growth and career development