Senior Innovation Research Specialist

About the role

At BBH, partnership is more than a form of ownership—it’s our approach to business and relationships. We support your professional and personal goals to help our clients and advance our business. With a 200‑year legacy and a shared passion for what’s next, this is the right place to build a fulfilling career. Brown Brothers Harriman is recruiting a Senior Innovation Research Specialist to join our fast‑paced Innovation team. We seek a highly skilled, innovative professional comfortable with ambiguity, with a strong background in research design methodologies and business case development. The Specialist will use research tools and techniques to discover and synthesize market feedback, evaluate value propositions across concepts, and support iterative testing of desirability prototypes and the creation of compelling data‑driven business cases.

Responsibilities

• Participate in the collaborative definition of the vision for new products, services or businesses.
• Maintain a robust catalog of experience design frameworks to apply on‑the‑fly based on circumstances and opportunities.
• Apply strong analytical and problem‑solving skills to help make data‑driven decisions.
• Work comfortably with cross‑functional teams (product management, engineering, marketing) to design and develop innovative product concepts and solutions.
• Define and select the most valuable methods/frameworks during workshops using “How Might We” techniques.
• Build precise financial plans that serve as target states for novel products.
• Articulate clear hypotheses and design qualitative research efforts to test and evaluate those hypotheses.
• Translate large volumes of research inputs into weighted evidence to enable team decision‑making.

Requirements

• Conduct market research and analysis to identify opportunities for new product development in the 0‑1 space, including in‑depth competitive analysis and TAM/SAM/SOM calculations.
• Develop and execute research plans using qualitative and quantitative methods to gather data on target markets, customer needs, and competitive landscapes.
• Create and present compelling business cases for new ideas, featuring market analysis and pro forma financial statements (ROI, P&L, FCF projections).
• Collaborate with product management to prioritize product features and develop/maintain a product roadmap (short‑ and long‑term goals, milestones, KPIs).
• Master design thinking workshop facilitation (Design Sprint format) on‑site and online using tools like Mural and Miro.
• Demonstrate stellar communication skills and fluency in pitching creative concepts confidently to internal and external stakeholders.
• Possess a deep understanding of customer experience (CX), including the ability to wireframe using Figma or Balsamiq.
• Maintain a curious nature, continuously evaluating frameworks and techniques from innovation, research, design, and product ecosystems to keep work cutting‑edge.
• Understand and be proficient with various AI tools and prompting techniques to generate thoughtful, accurate, independent, and sourceable research outputs.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience as a Consultant, Researcher, Product Manager, Product Designer, Strategist, or equivalent roles.
• Proven ability to thrive in environments characterized by rapid change, ambiguity, and high expectations (e.g., innovation‑focused consulting agencies, founder roles in venture‑backed companies, innovation departments at market leaders).
• Track record of innovation work with a portfolio showcasing both the work done and the processes followed.

Skills

• Research design methodologies and business case development.
• Observational and qualitative research methods, including ethnographic techniques for physical and virtual contexts.
• Mastery of design thinking workshop facilitation (Design Sprint) using Mural/Miro.
• Stellar communication and pitching abilities.
• Customer experience (CX) understanding and wireframing (Figma/Balsamiq).
• Curiosity and continuous learning of emerging frameworks.
• Proficiency with AI tools and prompting for research outputs.

Benefits

• A collaborative environment that enables you to step outside your