SENIOR RESEARCH MANAGER

We are a specialist division of M&C Saatchi.

Our aim is to harness the power of cutting-edge marketing, communications, and creativity, so that they become key tenets of social and behaviour change activity. Clients include a range of governments, INGO’s, foundations and multilaterals.

We are focused on tackling some of humanity's most challenging and important problems, in fragile states and developing countries, through the creation of multimedia messaging campaigns.

A specialist research team exists within the company to provide formative research support and to evaluate the progress of the campaigns. We are looking for an experienced mixed-methods researcher to lead this research team.

The Senior Research Manager is a management role within the Singapore-based Insights Team, responsible for leading high-quality research and evaluation across multiple communications programmes.

The role supports the Senior Research Director & Head of Indo-Pacific in the day-to-day running of the Singapore research function, combining hands-on research delivery with people management, partner coordination, and continuous improvement of research standards and processes. The Senior Research Manager ensures research is embedded across the full communications lifecycle, from formative insight and message development through to evaluation, learning, and optimisation

Research delivery (end-to-end)

• Lead and oversee research across the full communications lifecycle, including formative research, pre-testing monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
• Design and implement evaluation strategies aligned to behaviour change objectives, logframes, and Theories of Change.
• Oversee the use of qualitative, quantitative, an digital methods, ensuring methodological rigour and consistency.
• Analyse, synthesise, and sense-check data and analysis produced by the team to ensure accuracy, insight quality, and relevance.
• Own the production of high-quality client-facing reports (baseline, midline, endline), demonstrating excellent writing, synthesis, and storytelling skills to translate complex analysis into clear, compelling, and actionable insight.
• Act as a point of escalation for project-level delivery issues and represent the research team in internal discussions with Accounts, Strategy, and Production teams.

Team management

• Hold formal line management responsibility for Research Managers, (Senior) Analysts, and interns, including objectives, appraisals, and performance feedback.
• Coach and develop team members across analysis, writing, storytelling, and project delivery.
• Support onboarding and contribute to internal training, identifying skills gaps and supporting targeted capability development.
• Foster a collaborative, high-quality research culture within the Singapore office.
• Provide regular upward reporting to the Senior Research Director on delivery, quality, resourcing, and risks.

Managing research partner relationships

• Manage relationships with external research partners delivering primary research.
• Oversee quality, timelines, and scope adherence across outsourced work.
• Resolve delivery challenges or methodological issues in collaboration with partners.
• Coordinate inputs from partners and internal teams to ensure coherent and timely reporting.

AI, innovation, and process improvement

• Use AI tools to support desk research, synthesis, analysis, and reporting where appropriate.
• Encourage responsible adoption of AI-enable research practices across the team.
• Contribute to improving research efficiency, consistency, and quality through better tools, templates, and workflows.

Skills and experience

• Minimum 5 years’ experience in research, monitoring, and evaluation, ideally within communications, behaviour change, or social impact contexts.
• Strong experience designing and delivering qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research.
• Proven ability to manage research projects end-to-end, from design through to client-ready reporting.
• Excellent writing and storytelling skills, with experience producing clear, structured, and compelling insight reports.
• Experience line managing or mentoring junior and mid-level researchers, including training and capability development.
• Strong organisational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and deliver to deadlines.
• Experience working with behaviour change frameworks, Theories of Change, logframes, and evaluation strategies.
• Experience or strong interest in geopolitics, social research, and information environments.
• Experience working in complex or international contexts, globally and across Asia-pacific.
• Experience using, or strong interest in, AI tool across the research lifecycle.
• Monitoring and OSINT experience is desirable