Director/Senior Director, Research & Insights

About Salesforce

Salesforce is the #1 AI CRM, where humans with agents drive customer success together. Here, ambition meets action. Tech meets trust. And innovation isn’t a buzzword — it’s a way of life. The world of work as we know it is changing and we're looking for Trailblazers who are passionate about bettering business and the world through AI, driving innovation, and keeping Salesforce's core values at the heart of it all.

Ready to level-up your career at the company leading workforce transformation in the agentic era? You’re in the right place! Agentforce is the future of AI, and you are the future of Salesforce.

We are seeking a highly autonomous, strategically adept, and impact-driven Director/Senior Director of Research & Insights to provide leadership for the Marketing Cloud Research & Insights team. In this pivotal leadership role, you will be instrumental in goal setting the research strategy and vision specifically for Marketing Cloud, the #1 agentic marketing platform.

This role will have to work cross-functionally across highly technical teams, helping to drive action from insights. They will also need to be comfortable managing collaborative efforts across multiple product teams, and serve as a consultative partner in ad-hoc initiatives. Familiarity with leading a distributed team, enterprise marketing and the market for them, along with advanced competency with mixed methods, will be a value-add.

Sound like you? Then you're someone we want to work with. Join our amazing team and you'll get to work with some of the best and brightest. You'll find startup-like scrum teams, consumer-style innovation, and the opportunity to deliver great experiences to millions of end-users. And, by the way, you’ll work for a company that has been named – 10 years running – in Fortune 100 Top Places to work.

In this role you will:

• Strategic Research Vision & Agenda Leadership: Define, lead, and resource the research vision and agenda for the Marketing Cloud portfolio. This will involve close partnership with the General Manager (GM) and cross-functional leadership (Product, User Experience, Engineering, Product Marketing) to deliver insights supporting the cloud's biggest priorities.
• Proactive Product Strategy Advocacy: Proactively partnered with senior management across cross-functional teams, including Product, Design, Engineering, Product Marketing, and Customer Success, to identify and advocate for product strategy rooted in data and customer insights.
• High-Performance Research Team Leadership: Led a high-performance, high-productivity research team with direct reports based across the US, including active involvement in hiring and onboarding new team members as needed.
• Actionable Insights & Measurable Impact: Inspire and coach the team to deliver actionable and timely insights with measurable impact, informing cloud and product strategy as well as tactical decision-making.
• Researcher Development & Project Execution: Develop and advise researchers to excel on fast-paced projects, requiring meticulous attention to detail and efficient execution within constrained timelines.

You already bring:

• Deep expertise and passion for the research craft, specifically its application and deployment within a product-centric development lifecycle.
• Proven ability to translate complex research findings into actionable product insights and drive data-informed decision-making.
• Demonstrated capability in leading, aligning, and empowering geographically distributed researchers. Experience implementing processes for remote collaboration, fostering a high-performance environment across time zones and locations.
• Proficient in navigating complex organizational structures, influencing cross-functional stakeholders, and driving research initiatives from conception to delivery in a fast-paced environment.

Experience and skills required:

• 12+ years of experience leading research strategy in user experience, product design or technology contexts.
• Experience working in cross-functional teams (e.g. customer success, solution architects, design, product management, engineering, marketing)
• Excellent project management, executive communication skills, storytelling, and technical understanding of products.
• Proficiency in a range of generative and evaluative research techniques, and an understanding of how to apply them to complex questions in a technology context.
• Strong leadership capabilities and interpersonal skills, with experience growing, developing, and retaining top research and insights talent.
• Proven track record influencing product direction and strategy with actionable insights in a technical product environment.