Research & insights manager

Job Description

Reports to: Director of Research & Insights

About Independent Media

Independent Media comprises The Independent, Standard Digital, Bulletin, BuzzFeed UK, HuffPost UK, Tasty UK, Seasoned, IndyBest and indy100.

Harnessing market-leading innovation and excellence across its portfolio of pioneering brands, Independent Media has unrivalled scale, integrity and authority via its sites, apps, video, audio, experiential, newsletters and social media.

While each Independent Media brand speaks in an authentic, unique voice to a loyal and distinct audience, they stand together in their commitment to positivity, inclusivity, and quality journalism and content.

Independent Media’s network reaches 650 million users each month, with 1.1 billion content views across its brands and platforms, including web, apps, social media, podcasts, email, YouTube, syndication partners and print.

Job Purpose

As part of the Research & Insights team, you’ll support insight generation for both the UK and US markets. Working closely with the Director of Research & Insights and senior team members across the company, you’ll help turn complex data into clear, strategic narratives that inform business decisions across departments. Your work will help to deepen our understanding of what motivates and engages our audiences.

You’ll work with stakeholders across editorial, video, commercial, social, ecommerce, and data/marketing, supporting the business by running primary research, campaign effectiveness and managing our owned and operated reader panel/community.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

• We champion diversity in our teams and in our reporting. As a growing and global brand, we must have a workforce that’s more representative of our readers, viewers, clients and partners, and a workplace that creates a sense of belonging for everyone
• We are committed to hiring and developing a diverse workforce regardless of background, and we support our people to thrive in their careers here.

The Independent is an equal opportunities employer, if you require any reasonable adjustments to complete your application, please do not hesitate to advise us accordingly.

The Data & Marketing Department

The Data & Marketing department is the intelligence powerhouse of the business, representing the customer. Our goal is to inspire, engage and grow a loyal readership by harnessing data-driven insights and innovative marketing to deliver personalised, impactful content experiences that build lasting trust, diverse revenue streams, and a thriving future for quality journalism. The department consists of four teams: Data Science & Engineering, Data Intelligence & Monetisation, Research & Insight and Customer Marketing.

Research & Insights

The purpose of this team is to understand our brands, key verticals and audiences - identifying opportunities for optimisation and business growth. They do this by utilising best in class research and data storytelling techniques to deliver rich, meaningful insight to our commercial teams and the wider business.

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities - what is delivered

• Lead and deliver custom primary research and campaign effectiveness projects end-to-end, including research design, survey writing, data analysis, reporting, and creating engaging presentations.
• Develop insight-driven narratives that go beyond numbers to uncover who our audiences are and what motivates them.
• Lead communication and content consumer research from early discovery and quantitative validation through to post-launch evaluation.
• Act as a holistic, audience-led thinker, connecting insights across multiple data sources to craft compelling, strategic stories.
• Provide reader, market, and competitor research to support the editorial, subscriptions, product, and strategy teams.

Skills and Experience

You’ve built solid experience running research from start to finish and love bringing insights to life. You’re as comfortable in the numbers as you are in the narrative, balancing quick wins with long-term strategic thinking.

Essential skills and experience include:

• Fully proficient in the end-to-end quantitative research process, from designing proposals and managing fieldwork through to creating debriefs and delivering presentations.
• A strategic problem-solver who can balance immediate business needs with long-term vision and insight-led thinking.
• Experience creating and designing clear, visually compelling slides or presentations
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Strong attention to detail and an analytical mindset
• Comfortable identifying trends and drawing conclusions from data
• Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams
• Proactive and organised, with the ability to manage time and tasks effectively
• A natural data storyteller, able to transform numbers into insight-driven recommendations

Non essential but good to have

• Experience growing and managing an own and operated audience panel/community
• Ability to design campaign and ad effectiveness surveys and translate results into clear, actionable insights for post-campaign analysis
• Management experience as this roles career growth path would include managing a team of analysts

Our Values – you will deliver across all our values

Inclusive: We champion diversity in our teams and in our reporting. Working as a team, we put transparency and effective communication at the heart of everything we do.

Innovative: From the very beginning, The Independent has been breaking the mould. We take risks and are always looking to try new ideas in pursuit of excellence.

Independent: Nobody tells us what to think; we make up our own minds and aren’t afraid to do things differently. Like our readers, we value honesty and integrity above outside influences.