Purple Strategies is a corporate reputation and strategy firm that combines the creativity and discipline of brand communications with the speed and strategy of political campaigns to serve Fortune 500 companies, associations, nonprofits and some of the most recognizable brands in the world.  

We operate in a highly collaborative environment and apply integrated team-based approaches to help clients:

• ANTICIPATE reputation challenges and opportunities; 
• COMPEL change through business actions and transformation; 
• NAVIGATE reputation issues, acute crises, key business choices and policy/regulatory changes to inform decision-making. 

Purple helps the world’s most important organizations address their toughest challenges. 

The Position:

Research and insights drive our campaigns and fuel our thought leadership. Purple Strategies has full-service research capabilities and designs custom research programs to develop thoughtful engagement strategies that solve client challenges. In our view, developing actionable insights requires a holistic approach to data – leveraging different data sources to interrogate questions from multiple angles and perspectives – combined with the experience of our strategists and activators. We take great care to design bespoke research protocols that can ground impactful reputation strategies, lead to clear and compelling communications, and guide thoughtful activation.

We are looking for a Data Operations Manager to join our Insights Operations team in Alexandria, VA. This role will be responsible for supporting Purple client teams and Operations team on primary data initiatives while also improving overall primary research data and analytics capabilities.

What You'll Do:

• Identify, leverage and manage tools, vendors, and data systems Purple uses to solve primary research challenges
• Serve as a subject matter expert on core methods and tools and train teammates on relevant tools and vendors
• Manage/execute data gathering / fieldwork for Purple quant studies, including managing external programming and sample vendors and programming internal Purple surveys and quick-turn client surveys
• Collaborate with research team members and client team members to provide solutions to specific data requests including dataset merges, data processing and formatting, complex cross-tabulation, data weighting, statistical analysis, and other data challenges
• Prepare deliverables (including charts, tables, dashboards and visualizations) that effectively communicate information, trends, patterns, and predictions using relevant data
• Identify opportunities for process improvements, recommending new tools, and develop policies for data governance
• Use statistical tools to interpret data sets, paying particular attention to trends and patterns that could be valuable for diagnostic and predictive analytics efforts

 Experience, Knowledge and Skill Requirements:

• 8+ years of experience in a research operations role within a strategic communications agency or corporate reputation firm; on a political campaign or polling firm, or at a research, advertising, or marketing firm
• Bachelor’s degree in statistics, mathematics, econometrics, market/survey research from a reputable university or related field; Master’s degree a plus

Desired skills:

• Experience with data-management, statistical and optimization tools, ideally SPSS/R, Marketsight, and third-party survey platforms (CMIX, Decipher, Qualtrics, QuestionPro)
• Strong background in statistical analysis, particularly regression-based modeling
• Experience with survey sampling, survey research design best practices, and multiple survey methods (online, CATI/CAWI, mobile, web to text, chatbots, other)
• Strong interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills
• Attention to detail, self-starter, self-directed
• Internal stakeholder management and external vendor management
• Superior problem solving and analytical thinking
• Experience in political polling, strategic communications, or corporate reputation is a plus

Purple Strategies, LLC is an Equal Opportunity Employer and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Champion.