Senior Manager, Qualitative Evaluation and Insights
About The Position
CDI is seeking a rigorous, disciplined, and analytically sharp Senior Manager to serve as the qualitative expert behind our campus consulting work. Reporting to the Senior Director of Campus Culture Change, you will collect and code the interview, focus group, and survey data our engagements run on, and turn it into the findings our university partners act on. This is a hands-on analysis role. You will run qualitative data collection across a portfolio of campus engagements, code consistently against CDI's shared frameworks, and hold the line on coding quality across projects. You will draft reports, memos, and client-facing narratives, and build the materials that carry findings to internal and external audiences. You will also partner with other team members to build qualitative case studies and institutional spotlights.
Requirements
- A trained qualitative researcher. You bring 5+ years of applied qualitative research experience, or a graduate degree with substantial fieldwork, and you've run interviews and focus groups yourself.
- Disciplined with a codebook. You code high volumes of data consistently and know which discrepancies to escalate and which to resolve on the spot. Experience with multi-coder QA or inter-rater reliability is a strong plus.
- A clear analytic writer. You move from coded data to findings without overstating them, separate what participants said from what you infer, and integrate survey results with qualitative data.
- Organized across a portfolio. You keep several engagements moving without losing track of which campus, which codebook version, and which deadline.
- Grounded in organizational culture measurement. You assess culture beyond a single survey score, design approaches that combine interviews, documents, and survey data, and can explain what a given measure can and cannot tell us.
- A steady partner to campus contacts. You coordinate with institutional research, academic leadership, and student affairs, and you plan around the academic calendar, not against it.
- Credible across perspectives. You work with judgment across ideological lines, understand why nonpartisan restraint matters, and are motivated by CDI's mission.
- Fluent with tools and AI. You're comfortable in qualitative analysis software (Dovetail preferred; Dedoose, NVivo, ATLAS.ti, or MAXQDA welcome) and use AI to speed up coding and drafting, while keeping interpretation in human hands.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with multi-coder QA or inter-rater reliability is a strong plus.
- Dovetail preferred; Dedoose, NVivo, ATLAS.ti, or MAXQDA welcome
Responsibilities
- Collect and code interview, focus group, and open-ended survey data across a portfolio of campus consulting engagements, applying CDI's coding frameworks consistently from project to project.
- Serve as lead liaison with the Research team and contribute to codeframe updates
- Coordinate data collection logistics with campus partners, sequencing fieldwork around the academic calendar.
- Analyze qualitative and quantitative data to identify the themes, patterns, and findings that inform engagement recommendations and deliverables.
- Own engagement deliverables: reports, memos, presentations, client-facing narratives
- Present findings and recommendations to external stakeholders
- Build CDI's approach to assessing campus and Institutional Change Model consulting initiatives.
- Conduct interviews and draft case studies that surface what is working across our campus partnerships.
- Identify institutional spotlights for Culture Change projects, partnering with Communications.
- Advise colleagues and partners on measuring organizational culture and the conditions for dialogue and open inquiry
Benefits
- Unlimited PTO
- 13 company holidays
- Health, Vision & Dental plans
- 401(k) Match
- Professional Development budget
- Remote Work Support (home office equipment reimbursement, home internet/cell phone reimbursement)
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
