Senior Vice President, Researcher Growth

About the Role

Researchers change the world — and at Digital Science, we have the privilege of supporting them throughout that journey. They're often the first to discover our products, and as they move from students to decision-makers across institutions, enterprises, and governments, the trust we build early shapes how entire organizations work with us later. We're creating a new executive role to build and scale this relationship as one of Digital Science's most important strategic assets.

As SVP, Researcher Growth, you'll own the commercial performance of the researcher channel — driving acquisition, engagement, advocacy, conversion, retention, and monetization, plus the downstream opportunities and revenue this generates across our Academic, Enterprise, Government, and Publisher segments. Beyond the numbers, you'll build a global community that deepens researchers' connection to Digital Science and creates a durable engine of trust and growth.

This is a highly collaborative leadership role within a matrix organization, requiring strong partnerships across Segment, Product, and Marketing. Success will come from commercial leadership, influence, strategic thinking, and data-driven clarity that turns complex stakeholder conversations into decisive action.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Researcher Growth Channel: Define and execute Digital Science's researcher growth strategy, ensuring the channel delivers measurable contribution to company and segment growth objectives. Build the programs and operating models that convert researcher engagement into commercial outcomes — from first adoption through retention and cross-product expansion. Partner with Product, Marketing, and segment leaders (Academic, Enterprise, Government, Publisher) to prioritize investments and align initiatives with market priorities. Own annual plans, forecasts, and targets for the channel, and identify opportunities to grow cross-product adoption.
• Build and Activate the Researcher Community: Build and scale a global researcher community — including ambassador and advocacy programs — that drives awareness, engagement, and commercial growth. Translate community engagement into product adoption, qualified pipeline, conversion, and long-term retention.
• Drive Commercial Performance: Develop and optimize direct-to-researcher commercial motions that convert engagement into revenue, pipeline, institutional demand, and customer expansion. Monitor channel performance against targets, flagging risks early and acting decisively. Work closely with Product, Marketing, Revenue Operations, and Commercial teams to continuously improve acquisition, conversion, retention, and lifetime value.
• Lead Across the Matrix: Build alignment across market, product, marketing, and commercial leaders, establishing shared goals and operating rhythms for coordinated execution. Align priorities and resolve competing interests across teams without relying on direct authority.
• Measure and Improve: Define the metrics that quantify the channel's contribution — revenue, pipeline, conversion, retention, lifetime value, cross-product adoption, and community engagement — and drive continuous improvement through experimentation and analysis.
• Shape Company Strategy: As a member of the Commercial Leadership Team, embed researcher engagement into portfolio planning and product investment decisions, serving as the executive voice for researcher growth at the highest levels of the company.

Qualifications

• Commercial Growth Leadership: You have successfully led a commercial growth function with accountability for measurable business outcomes — direct revenue, self-service growth, pipeline, or customer expansion. You know how to build growth engines that combine product, marketing, community, and commercial execution, and you're comfortable translating strategy into performance at the executive level. You can point to a specific number — a revenue target, a growth rate, a pipeline figure — and say: that was mine. You are comfortable in the data, able to spot where a growth model is breaking down, and you use numbers to sharpen decisions rather than justify them after the fact.
• Experience Building Direct-to-Researcher Or Direct-to-User Growth Models: You have built and scaled growth models that attract, engage, convert, retain, and monetize users at scale. Your experience may come from product-led, subscription, or community-led businesses where individual adoption evolves into organizational purchasing. You are as comfortable analyzing a conversion funnel as you are talking to a researcher about why they chose a product — and you know the two are connected.
• Exceptional Matrix Leadership: You have led initiatives requiring alignment across business units, product, marketing, and executive stakeholders. You build trust and influence quickly without relying on direct authority. When priorities compete, you escalate with a recommendation rather than a problem, and you don't mistake collaboration for shared accountability.
• Passion for Researchers and Innovation: Experience in research technology, academic publishing, or knowledge-intensive industries is valuable but not essential. What matters most is your genuine enthusiasm for the role researchers play in advancing knowledge and for building products and experiences that help them succeed.

Our Values

We invest in, nurture and support innovative businesses and technologies that make all parts of the research process more open, efficient and effective. The values we live by are:

• We are brave in the pursuit of better
• We are collaborative and inclusive
• We are always open-minded
• We are from and for the community

At Digital Science, our vision is to see research flow seamlessly – trusted, collaborative, and accessible – fueling breakthroughs that push humanity forward. This ambitious mission is one we achieve together, by enabling open, collaborative, inclusive research. We firmly believe that to truly innovate and solve the complex challenges faced by our customers, from researchers and universities to funders and publishers, we need diverse perspectives, experiences, and ideas. A rich mix of voices drives quality insights, fosters enhanced collaboration, and ultimately pushes knowledge forward more effectively.