Senior Mixed Method Insights Researcher

Merck • Saint Louis, MO

6d • Hybrid

About The Position

This role supports our customer-centric philosophy by generating the deep, evidence-based understanding that shapes product roadmaps, digital experiences, and long-term strategic direction across the Life Science division. We are seeking a seasoned Strategic Insights Researcher to drive a rigorous, mixed-methods research practice that bridges customer understanding with business strategy. This is a senior individual-contributor role embedded at the intersection of digital commerce, customer experience, product, and strategy. You will partner daily with the Insights & CX Strategy team, the Digital & eCommerce organization, Product Management, and broader Strategy teams—as well as colleagues in marketing, sales operations, and supply chain—to convert complex data into clear, confident decisions. The ideal candidate brings equal command of qualitative and quantitative research disciplines: you are as comfortable leading an ethnographic fieldwork study as you are designing a conjoint survey, running regression models, or building a measurement framework. Above all, you translate evidence into compelling narratives that move stakeholders from insight to action.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree required.
• At least 6 years of hands-on mixed-methods research experience, ideally in a B2B or complex B2C environment.
• Demonstrated mastery of interviews, focus groups, ethnography, diary studies, contextual inquiry, card sorting, and moderated usability testing.
• Proficiency in coding frameworks and thematic analysis (e.g., NVivo, Atlas.ti, Dovetail).
• Hands-on experience designing and analyzing surveys, conjoint/max-diff studies, segmentation analyses, and behavioral data sets.
• Comfortable with statistical software (SPSS, R, Python, or equivalent) and significance testing.
• Ability to pull and interpret web/digital analytics (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel) and CRM data, and synthesize them alongside primary research.
• Proven ability to manage research programs for multiple simultaneous stakeholder groups—product, strategy, digital, marketing—and to influence without formal authority.
• Exceptional storytelling and data-visualization skills; track record of creating executive-level presentations (PowerPoint/Keynote) and succinct, decision-ready reports.
• Excellent written and verbal English required.
• Strong ethical mindset; familiarity with GDPR, ICH guidelines, and data-privacy best practices in research contexts.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree (Master's or PhD) in anthropology, sociology, psychology, cognitive science, statistics, marketing research, HCI, or a related field strongly preferred.
• Prior roles in digital commerce, SaaS, life sciences, or industrial markets are a strong plus.
• Proficiency in additional languages is a meaningful plus given our global customer base.
• Experience in life sciences, pharmaceuticals, biotech, or laboratory markets.
• Background in eCommerce, digital product, or customer-experience strategy roles.
• Familiarity with journey mapping, service design, Jobs-to-be-Done frameworks, and usability research principles.
• Comfort with self-serve analytics and BI tools (Tableau, Power BI, Looker).
• Experience designing and facilitating insight-activation workshops and synthesis sessions.
• Track record of translating research into measurable product or CX improvements.
• Change management or organizational-influence experience in matrixed environments.

Responsibilities

• Develop and own an integrated research agenda that serves the Insights & CX Strategy team, Product, Digital & eCommerce, and Strategy stakeholders.
• Align priorities across competing business questions and translate ambiguous briefs into rigorous study designs.
• Design and lead end-to-end qualitative programs—in-depth interviews, focus groups, diary studies, ethnography, contextual inquiry, and moderated usability sessions—to uncover customer motivations, unmet needs, and pain points across omnichannel journeys.
• Design and field quantitative studies including surveys (attitudinal, behavioral, satisfaction/NPS), conjoint/max-diff analyses, and segmentation models.
• Perform statistical analysis (regression, clustering, significance testing) and translate outputs into business-ready findings.
• Combine qual and quant streams into cohesive, multi-source insight syntheses.
• Use behavioral analytics (clickstream, CRM, A/B test data) alongside primary research to build a 360° view of the customer.
• Act as a strategic research partner to Product Management, CX Strategy, Digital & eCommerce, Marketing, Sales Operations, and Supply Chain.
• Embed insights into roadmap planning, go-to-market strategies, and experience-design sprints.
• Translate complex, multi-method findings into clear narratives, executive briefings, and workshop-ready materials.
• Champion concise, action-oriented reporting over exhaustive data dumps.
• Maintain and evolve a living library of personas, journey maps, segmentation frameworks, and insight repositories so that institutional knowledge is accessible and reusable across the organization.
• Manage participant recruitment, vendor relationships, consent and data-privacy compliance (GDPR and regional standards), panel maintenance, and budget stewardship across simultaneous projects.
• Define and track metrics that demonstrate research ROI and the downstream influence of insights on business decisions, customer experience scores, and commercial outcomes.
• Coach cross-functional partners and junior researchers in research fundamentals, synthesis practices, and insight-to-action frameworks; champion a culture of evidence-based decision-making.

Benefits

• health insurance
• paid time off (PTO)
• retirement contributions
• other perquisites
• Flexible working arrangements and competitive benefits.
• Continuous learning opportunities and career development pathways within the broader organization.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior