Senior Research Manager - Product & AI

About Understood

Understood is a nonprofit focused on shaping the world for difference. We raise awareness of the challenges and strengths of people who learn and think differently. Our resources help people navigate challenges, gain confidence, and find support and community so they can thrive. Having a shared commitment to our values is a key factor in any hire we make. We have five core values:

• Continuously learn.
• Act with intention.
• Champion difference.
• Inspire change.
• Grow together.

Come be part of an organization with an entrepreneurial spirit that’s helping to shape the world for difference. Together, we can build a world where everyone can reach their full potential.

Who you are

To advance Understood’s mission and to further our impact, we’re hiring a Senior Research Manager, reporting to our Director of Ecosystem Research.

You are a researcher who works at the intersection of market intelligence and automation. You excel at delivering cutting-edge market insights to product and other functional teams, providing the daily and weekly insights that fuel innovation. You build AI-driven workflows—such as custom bots and scraping pipelines—to deliver a steady stream of product landscape insights to cross-functional teams. You use LLMs like Claude, Gemini and Perplexity to automate secondary research, and you maintain an always-current view of the market so Understood’s product decisions are evidence-based and ahead of trends.

What you’ll do

Insights

• Produce high-quality, business-driven insights for many teams, with a focus on the product side of the business (marketing, partnerships, external research, and more).
• Partner with teams to clarify and sharpen research questions, ensuring findings address the real strategic need rather than the surface-level ask.

Product Landscape Automation & Embedded Support

• Own the "always-on" scraping and updating of product landscapes to ensure Understood remains ahead of market trends.
• Design and maintain AI bots (e.g. Gemini GEMs) to create automated data pipelines that streamline secondary research data collection and analysis.
• Serve as the research partner for Product, Product Marketing, and UXR teams, providing rapid-response analysis and weekly Slack updates on competitor moves.

Partner Support

• Review deal memos for Difference Partners (DiffPar) and facilitate knowledge exchange between the portfolio and internal product teams.
• Own the ad hoc scraping partner product landscapes as part of our external Universal Design revenue-driving partnership offering.

Execution

• Independently carry out research projects from start to finish, delivering high-quality findings for specific product initiatives.
• Proactively solve problems to deliver high-quality work, adapting easily to change and ensuring the research has meaningful results.
• Create and manage processes for both our team and cross-functional needs.

This is a hybrid role that requires a minimum of three (3) days a week in our NYC office, with a focus on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. We are a Mac-based environment, and team members are provided a Mac laptop for their work.

Must-haves

• 5–7 years of experience performing rigorous field scans and secondary research to evaluate markets for product creation.
• Expert experience building natural language bots and leveraging AI (e.g., Claude, ChatGPT) to automate research workflows, especially desk research.
• Ability to use low-code/no-code solutions to fuel AI-driven data scraping in major company-approved platforms like Claude and/or Perplexity.
• Strong background in Product Research, ideally within EdTech or social impact.
• Ability to synthesize findings into clear, actionable daily updates for cross-functional peers.
• Committed to embodying and being a steward of our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with web scraping tools or basic Python for data collection.
• Experience with working with AI agent building platforms (e.g. Cursor or N8N).
• Familiarity with the Learning and Thinking Difference (LATD) market.