Manager - Research Operations

The MCDC Research Operations team is the operational backbone of Pinterest’s Marketing Communications Design and Creative (MCDC) organization. We empower world-class researchers across product and brand teams, ensuring they have the systems, processes, and partnerships in place to accelerate insights, scale impact, and maintain the highest standards of rigor and compliance. By shaping robust frameworks and removing operational barriers, we enable our researchers to focus on solving Pinterest’s most important challenges with confidence and precision.

About the Role:

Pinterest’s mission is to help people find inspiration and create a life they love. As Manager II, MCDC Research Operations, you’ll play a mission-critical leadership role by enabling our research community to work faster, smarter, and better. You’ll lead a dedicated team focused on participant recruitment, research process enablement, vendor partnerships, and operational compliance. You’ll remove friction, anticipate future needs, and build for scale and stability—empowering researchers to deliver innovative insights that shape Pinterest’s future.

We operate in a highly collaborative, cross-functional environment, partnering with UX, brand and product researchers, legal, finance, vendors, and program managers. Your influence will help deliver increased team productivity, team efficiency gains, innovative customer experiences, and bigger business impact.

What you’ll do:

• Team Leadership: Build, coach, and manage a high-performing research operations team (program managers, recruiters, coordinators). Set vision, goals, and create a culture of operational excellence, collaboration, and accountability.

• Participant Recruitment: Own strategies and processes for robust, inclusive participant recruitment and panel management—ensuring high participant quality, operational speed, and a positive experience for both researchers and study participants.

• Process Design & Knowledge Management: Define, implement, and continuously optimize research infrastructure and workflows. Author clear, scalable documentation and resource libraries to standardize and elevate research ops practices across teams.

• Vendor Partnerships: Serve as the accountable partner for external research and recruitment vendors—lead performance management, selection, onboarding, and relationship development to ensure value and compliance.

• AI & Automation: Proactively explore and leverage generative AI, automation, and emerging technologies to streamline recruitment workflows, scale operational capacity, and enable data-driven decision-making across Research Ops.

• Cross-Functional Enablement: Partner closely with product and brand research, legal, finance, and MCDC business operations. Proactively align on research needs, resource planning, compliance, and risk—removing operational and administrative barriers before they arise.

• Operational Excellence: Analyze metrics, identify process gaps, drive ongoing improvements, and establish best practices in project planning, resource allocation, and risk management, building for both current and future state needs.

• Inclusive Research Culture: Champion programs and practices that foster diverse, representative participant panels, and inclusive research experiences aligned with Pinterest’s mission and user base.

What we're looking for:

• 8+ years in research operations, UX/program management, or related roles in a technology-driven environment.

• 3+ years in people management, building and developing research ops teams or cross-functional project teams.

• Advanced understanding of research methodologies, participant sourcing, and the end-to-end research lifecycle.

• Demonstrated experience optimizing processes, scaling operations, and managing research vendors or external partners.

• A strong curiosity for leveraging AI, automation, and new technologies to create more scalable, efficient, and intelligent research operations.

• Excellent stakeholder management skills: adept at influencing, aligning, and collaborating cross-functionally with product, brand, legal, vendors, and leadership.

• Mastery of project management, documentation frameworks, and research toolsets.

• Exceptional communication: skilled at articulating complex strategies, guiding teams, reporting to leadership, and driving clarity throughout the organization.

• High integrity and rigor: organized, detail-oriented, and skilled at building systems that scale and stand the test of time.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience (advanced degree, PMP, or related certifications a plus).

• Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience leading research operations across both product and brand/marketing/creative research.

  • Background in large-scale platform or consumer tech environments.

  • Hands-on experience evaluating or implementing AI-driven workflows and automation to improve research/operations outcomes.

  • Familiarity with innovative research or data platforms.

  • Prior work managing distributed or global teams.

  • Demonstrated impact improving team productivity and business outcomes through ops leadership.

Relocation Statement:

• This position is not eligible for relocation assistance. Visit our PinFlex page to learn more about our working model.

In-Office Requirement:

This role will need to be in the office for in-person collaboration up to 1-2 times per year and therefore can be situated anywhere in the country.

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