Role Description

The Dropbox Research & Insights team is a large, well-empowered organization, and our Central Research team needs a seasoned, strategic-minded leader that can help take it to the next level. 

As the Director of Research & Insights for our Central Research team, you are energized by guiding research at a company scale and have wide influence across various company leadership teams. 

The Central Research team is a team focused on Research specialists, strategy, and services. Unlike our other Research & Insights teams, the Central Research team members are not embedded with product teams. The team is made up of senior qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods researchers with skills that span the marketing and product lifecycle. The Central Research team is responsible for answering strategic executive questions, conducting foundational and holistic research (i.e. helping to drive innovation), creating company-wide insights resources (e.g. user personas), and promoting a more customer-centric company overall.

You are comfortable presenting to and working closely with executives, and you have a strong track record driving company-wide insights wins. Overall, you are known for your strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

You are a talented mentor, are curious about how people work together and want to empower your team to create, share, and collaborate better together. You have experience leading both qualitative and quantitative research across all parts of the marketing and product lifecycle. You believe that research insights have the greatest impact when built on triangulated user data and strongly influences product, design, marketing, and executive business decisions. 

Responsibilities

• You will be responsible for connecting the Central Team’s research to other parts of the company through strong cross-functional collaboration, allowing research to be seen as a thought partner across all functions.
• You will be a beacon of leadership throughout the company. You will bring strong viewpoints around the role of research in the strategic and day-to-day decision-making process, continuing to define what research is (and isn’t) at Dropbox.
• You will have a knack for attracting, developing, and retaining extraordinary talent that instills a shared sense of purpose and belonging. 
• You will oversee research initiatives that help develop and define human/business needs into a coherent set of insights that inform and influence our company and product strategies. 

Requirements

• Senior level leadership experience in driving product initiatives with perspective
• M.S. or Ph.D. in scientific/technical field or equivalent experience
• 10+ years of industry experience leading Research initiatives. 
• 5+ years of experience leading research teams in product development.
• Has managed a team of 8+ researchers, including Staff-level researchers. Experience managing other managers is strongly preferred.
• Strong experience in leading time-bound and multi-partner initiatives.