Product Research Lead

LitLab•,

7d•$100,000 - $125,000

About The Position

LitLab helps developing readers build confidence and fluency by providing educators with tools to find and create decodable texts, offer meaningful reading practice, and understand student progress, all aligned to their existing curriculum. LitLab is a fast-growing startup with a collaborative, mission-driven team dedicated to serving teachers and students. The company values urgency, purpose, experimentation, learning, progress, collective ownership, adaptability, and thoughtful interactions.

Requirements

User research experience, including running and synthesizing usability and feasibility studies, recruiting participants, facilitating sessions, and translating findings into actionable recommendations.
Strong organizational and administrative skills for managing research end-to-end, including scheduling, logistics, data management, and documentation.
Comfort sourcing and closing partnerships, including identifying suitable districts, navigating approval processes, and coordinating agreements.
Familiarity with quasi-experimental or RCT methodology.
Self-starter mindset.
Comfort with both quantitative and qualitative methods, able to turn messy field data into a clear account of findings.
Intellectual honesty and rigor, with fidelity to the scientific process and the ability to be straightforward about data limitations.
Ability to be self-directed and own a research process end-to-end with limited daily oversight.
Resourceful and adaptable, thriving in situations without a predefined playbook.
Exceptional communication skills, both verbal and written.
Ability to stay organized with multiple tasks.
Eagerness to grow as the role expands, including into more technical study design.
Deep care for improving early literacy and the educational experience for teachers and students.

Nice To Haves

Experience in UX research, product design, education research, or program evaluation.
Familiarity with quasi-experimental or RCT methodology.
Early literacy experience.

Responsibilities

Manage LitLab's research program end to end, including recruiting pilot districts, conducting co-design and usability studies, and supporting evidence generation.
Run quick research and design loops, understanding teacher pain points, utilizing AI tools to create prototypes, and handing off designs to engineering.
Own co-design and usability research by scheduling, running, and analyzing sessions with classroom teachers, and translating findings into actionable recommendations.
Identify, recruit, and manage pilot sites, coordinating participation and data-sharing agreements, and owning the day-to-day relationship with onboarded districts.
Lead quasi-experimental and RCT work, owning the quasi-experimental study and acting as a counterpart to independent evaluators for an RCT.
Coordinate the collection of external benchmark data, ensure the quality of a data ingestion pipeline, and create structured teacher surveys.
Coordinate data and benchmarking submissions to grantors, create reporting materials, and liaise with external partners.