Managing Director, Insights

About the role

Bully Pulpit International is an outcomes agency made up of strategists, data scientists, and artists. We come from politics, brands, and government and we communicate without barriers and measure what matters. We have more than 400 team members in six countries and thirteen offices — Berlin, Brussels, Chicago, D.C., London, Los Angeles, New York, Oslo, San Francisco, and Zürich. We apply our unique expertise across strategic communications, public affairs, research, and digital marketing to create sophisticated and customized strategies that make change possible for both American and European clients.

Impact

In this role, you'll lead our Insights team across opinion research, behavioral analytics, and campaign measurement. The goal of this team is to help our clients understand not just what's happening — but more importantly, why, what they should do next, and what's actually working. We believe in optimizing for persuasion at the point of impact — understanding not just what works in a laboratory environment, but what actually persuades people in the real world. To accomplish this, we've intentionally built this team differently: a multidisciplinary group that understands the interaction of audience, message, media, and moment.

Day-to-day responsibilities

• Counsel senior clients
• Oversee the design of qualitative and quantitative research and analytics programs to inform messaging, strategy, and tactics
• Partner closely with senior communications strategists, digital experts, and creative teams to develop data-driven strategies that measurably drive real-world reputational and business outcomes
• Serve as an integrator who bridges technical expertise with creative narrative. Guide the team through change by simplifying complex methodologies into clear, strategic narratives, ensuring our data-driven insights remain accessible, human-centric, and actionable for senior stakeholders
• Lead & develop the team
  • Lead a team of researchers, analysts, and data scientists
  • Set the standard for the team's work, from research design to what we put in front of a client
  • Foster an environment of rigorous curiosity. Encourage the team to constantly challenge the status quo, move beyond experimentation to scale ideas into standard practice, and embrace a 'bias toward what's new' to keep BPI on the cutting edge of modern insights
  • Structure capacity planning and team development
  • Build a culture of innovation, curiosity, excellence, and collaboration
  • Reinforce a supportive environment characterized by high expectations and low ego. Encourage risk-taking and collaboration by maintaining a culture of mutual responsibility and support
• Build the future
  • Set the innovation agenda to keep BPI on the cutting edge of modern insights methodology and analysis
  • Explore new methods of research and measurement, from synthetic audiences to behavioral clickstream data
  • Champion the use of AI technology to make the team's work faster and more effective
  • Partner closely with our Labs (product development) team to develop new offerings
  • Drive thought leadership internally + externally

Requirements

• 12+ years of senior experience in research and analytics
• Experience in public affairs, corporate reputation, or political campaigns strongly preferred
• Demonstrated experience synthesizing multi-modal data across opinion research, behavioral analytics, social listening, and digital media to drive programs
• A strong strategic and tactical command of data. You can explain the result to the C-suite, and interrogate how the data was produced
• An understanding of what matters to drive campaigns. You thrive in data but understand the difference between statistical significance and importance. You think in first principles and systems. Once you've solved something, you can scale it across the team
• A deep intellectual curiosity for how to understand and influence opinion and behavior

Pay

Starting Salary Range: $215,000 (+ annual bonus)

Schedule

Expectation to work from one of our offices (DC, NYC, SF, CHI, LA) at least 3 days a week

Benefits

• 100% company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) program with employer match up to 4%
• Generous time off for vacation
• $50 monthly phone reimbursement
• Unlimited sick time
• 16 weeks of paid leave for new parents