Applied Research Manager

Job Description

ABOUT US

tms unites technology, marketing, and sourcing to drive transformational change for the world’s leading brands. With more than 1,400 employees across 28 countries., we offer an impressive range of solutions – from inspiration and innovation to category management and delivery.

Operating as a creative agency, a strategic consultancy, a sourcing business, and a technology provider, we engage with over 110 million customers every single day for our clients, including McDonald’s, T-Mobile, O2, Starbucks, and adidas.

Most importantly, we're a place where you can achieve great things, and be recognized as the best.

WHAT MATTERS THE MOST

Breakthrough, business-driving ideas come from extraordinary people with the freedom to be their most authentic selves at work. Authenticity and diversity are critical elements of our business. They can only be realized when we create access and equity for all. We foster a culture of inclusion and belonging and aspire to be ever-evolving.

tms is a place where brilliant people are better together. If you want your ideas to be heard and to contribute to a culture of inclusion and authenticity, bring us your voice! Visit us at tmsw.com.

WHY WE THINK YOU WILL LOVE THIS ROLE

The Applied Research Lead will sit within our Applied Innovation & Research team. We are a small, high-impact group that functions as a shared intelligence and solutioning engine across our entire organization.

We start with pain points: real, specific, messy operational and business pain sourced directly from the people living it every day. From there, we research, build, and deploy proprietary technology and AI-based solutions that transform how we work and have revenue-generating potential.

This role is for someone who asks "why does this process exist?" and designs the process that replaces it. You believe that good research doesn’t end at the insight, it ends when something changes because of it.

You will be doing work that lives at the intersection of human-centered research, organizational intelligence, and emerging AI capabilities. You will facilitate structured discovery sessions with business leaders one day, and design human perception studies to validate the outputs of our proprietary AI models the next. You will have direct visibility into the full innovation lifecycle, from identifying a problem to watching a deployed solution improve in real time based on your findings.

WHAT YOU WILL BRING TO THE ORGANIZATION

Research Leadership & Facilitation

• Lead and scale our Painstorming practice, a structured facilitation methodology focused on surfacing and deeply understanding pain points before any solutioning begins
• Design and facilitate Painstorm sessions with stakeholders across business lines and organizational levels, from individual contributors to senior leadership
• Translate complex, ambiguous operational realities into clear process maps, structured insights, and prioritized opportunity areas
• Build this into a recurring, proactive intelligence practice so our team always has a pulse on where the organization is hurting and where it's ready to evolve
• Generate senior leadership support for the efficacy of Painstorming by presenting case studies
• Leverage collaborative whiteboarding tools (e.g., Miro) to facilitate Painstorm sessions and translate complex processes into clear, visual process maps that stakeholders can align around
• Support cross-functional research, if and when needed as bandwidth allows, by shaping research plans, advising on appropriate methods, facilitating key workshops and synthesizing findings into actionable recommendations.

Human Evaluation of Proprietary AI Model Outputs

• Substantiate technical tests of AI model outputs with rigorous human perception research, making the case that model outputs meet high IP fidelity standards required for real-world use for clients
• Design and execute structured testing studies across key evaluator groups: clients, internal creative experts, and recruited participants
• Devise evaluation frameworks that assess model outputs against fidelity criteria
• Develop repeatable fidelity benchmarks that measure longitudinal model performance over time
• Design tests that push model capabilities and expose limitations to drive genuine model improvement
• Collaboration with technical leads to develop an understanding of underlying model architectures
• Recruit and manage participants for structured studies using tools like Dscout and Qualtrics; manage the budget allocated for recruited testing with appropriate rigor
• Implement and enforce controls for handling confidential client IP and internal proprietary processes throughout all testing workflows
• Translate findings into clear, actionable recommendations for our technical team, and develop presentation-ready materials to communicate results and build confidence with clients

Organizational Intelligence & Stakeholder Research

• Maintain an ongoing cadence of stakeholder engagement across the organization, from leadership to specialists, to gather requirements, surface friction points, and identify emerging needs before they become urgent problems
• Synthesize insights and cumulative intelligence gathered across business lines into a coherent picture of organizational health and opportunity, enabling our team to coordinate innovation work that addresses similar needs at scale
• Develop efficient processes and workflows to identify strategic connections and opportunities across the inventory of problems identified

UX Research & Design for Internal AI Products

• Oversee UX research and design for custom AI solutions our team builds and deploys as products to internal teams across the organization
• Design and execute iterative usability testing with end-users of our deployed tools, gathering structured feedback on what is working, what is not, and why
• Make evidence-based recommendations for product improvements and work closely with technical teammates to ensure those recommendations translate into better experiences
• Bring deep UX/UI design knowledge to bear in shaping tools that are not just functional, but genuinely usable by the people they are meant to serve, potentially leveraging Figma for wireframes, prototypes, and more.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE WE WOULD LIKE YOU TO HAVE

• 4–7 years of UX Research and Design Research experience, with demonstrated ownership of end-to-end research projects
• Experience spearheading and facilitating discovery, participatory design, alignment, and synthesis workshops.
• with diverse stakeholder groups, including internal and external-facing participants.
• Drive research direction by recommending and designing end-to-end qualitative and quantitative approaches by proactively defining the right methodology, order, and plan based on business goals.
  • Methods include usability testing, in-depth interviews (IDIs), field studies, ethnographic studies, comparative testing, diary studies, etc.
• Proficiency with research tools such as Dscout, Qualtrics, and other comparable platforms
• Experience in UX Design or close collaboration with UX/UI teams, with enough design fluency to provide meaningful guidance on product experience decisions
• Demonstrated ability to synthesize findings across multiple workstreams into coherent themes, clear narratives, and actionable next steps
• Excellent written and verbal communication demonstrating your ability make complex things simple without losing the nuance
• Journey, process, and experience mapping by translating complex steps into clear frameworks
• Regular use of tools like Claude and ChatGPT as active research and thinking partners integrated into your workflows

And we’d love you to…

• Have experience conducting research on digital products or internal tools — not just consumer-facing experiences
• Have operated in an agency environment, or worked as a shared resource supporting multiple clients or internal teams simultaneously
• Be the person who builds research processes, not just follows them — you've created research practices or evaluation frameworks from scratch before
• A working understanding of how generative AI systems function, or a clear and demonstrated eagerness to develop that fluency quickly

Any of the following would be a plus

• Experience working with or evaluating outputs from large language models (LLMs) or other generative AI systems
• Exposure to QSR, retail, supply chain, or marketing services industries
• Familarity with accessibility best practices

Starting Salary Between: $115,000-$125,000

TOTAL REWARDS

Our total rewards philosophy integrates programs for compensation, benefits, recognition, learning and development, corporate culture, corporate citizenship and work-life balance. While individual program components may differ by country, some things remain constant:

• Our commitment to rewarding results
• Opportunities to work with talented and driven individuals at every level of our company who respect each other, treat each other fairly and hold one another accountable for our customers’—and our company’s—success

There's more ...

Generous medical, dental, vision and other great benefits

Paid parental and medical leave programs

401(k) with a company match component and profit sharing

15 days of paid time off plus company holidays

Hybrid work model

Tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment assistance

Inclusive employee resource groups

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

RECRUITING AGENCIES

tms does not accept agency resumes submitted by third-party vendors unless a valid agreement has been signed and the tms Talent Acquisition Team has granted authorization for submissions for a specified position. Please do not submit or forward resumes to our site, tms employees, or any other company location. tms is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.