Senior Research Associate - Market Intelligence at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)

Key Responsabilities:

Portfolio Research Coordination and Workflow Management

• Coordinate assigned market intelligence studies, typically managing day-to-day activities across 2–3 studies at a time, to help ensure delivery against agreed scope, quality standards, budgets and timelines.
• Maintain study workplans, trackers, milestones and deliverable schedules; identify implementation risks or delays and raise issues requiring further direction with relevant staff.
• Coordinate agreed research workflows across questionnaire development, partner engagement and procurement, survey programming, piloting, field implementation and data handover.
• Coordinate between the internal research teams, country teams, procurement colleagues and external research partners for assigned studies.
• Support preparation of implementation plans, budgets, Terms of Reference, scopes of work and partner deliverables, based on agreed study requirements.
• Maintain organized study documentation and ensure key decisions, changes and implementation updates are recorded and communicated to relevant team members.

Research Design, Survey Review and Standardization

• Contribute to the design and implementation of quantitative, qualitative and experimental market research studies, selecting and adapting research tools appropriate to different research questions and respondent groups.
• Guide the development and implementation of research approaches including surveys, interviews, focus groups, observational approaches, concept or product testing, experiments and other appropriate market research methods.
• Explore, test and refine new research methods and tools that could strengthen market intelligence research, including appropriate applications of AI-assisted research tools, digital methods, video-based approaches and other emerging techniques.
• Review and standardize questionnaire content across assigned studies, including question wording, response categories, variable naming, coding, identifiers and use of agreed templates, question banks and data dictionaries.
• Check survey instruments for logic, consistency, respondent burden and suitability for analysis, while maintaining version control and documenting changes through review, translation, programming, piloting and field implementation. · Contribute to the use and improvement of research protocols, SOPs and quality-assurance procedures based on lessons from study implementation.

Survey Programming, Testing and Data Quality Assurance

• Test programmed surveys prior to deployment, document identified issues and make agreed corrections in consultation with the research team.
• Support user acceptance testing and piloting of digital survey tools, incorporating feedback and ensuring final versions are ready for field implementation.
• Apply agreed survey-programming conventions and templates to promote consistency and reusability across assigned studies.
• Support the preparation and use of routine field-monitoring and data-quality checks to identify missing data, outliers, inconsistencies, unusual interview patterns and other potential quality concerns.
• Review data-quality outputs during field implementation and flag emerging issues to the research lead and relevant research partners.
• Troubleshoot routine survey-programming and data-quality issues with research teams and implementation partners, escalating issues that may affect research design, data integrity or interpretation.

Partner Coordination, Procurement Support and Field Implementation

• Act as a day-to-day contact for implementing partners on assigned studies, helping to clarify study protocols, tools, timelines, quality requirements and agreed deliverables.
• Enable partner onboarding and coordination of questionnaire translation, piloting, enumerator and supervisor training, field launch and implementation follow-up.
• Track fieldwork progress against agreed plans and timelines, review routine implementation and data-quality updates, and raise issues requiring further attention with the relevant staff.
• Follow up with partners on agreed actions, timelines and deliverables, and help resolve operational issues during implementation.
• Support review of partner outputs and documentation to confirm that agreed deliverables have been completed to the required standard.

Research Systems, Knowledge Management and Continuous Improvement

• Maintain and improve reusable research tools, templates, SOPs, training materials and implementation resources.
• Document lessons and recurring issues from research implementation and identify practical improvements to research tools and workflows.
• Contribute to the development and refinement of quality-control tools for research design, field implementation and data handover.
• Explore and test new tools and methodologies that could improve research quality, efficiency or insight generation, including AI-assisted tools, digital research approaches, video and other emerging methods.
• Support small-scale testing and refinement of promising approaches before their wider application across studies.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in economics, agricultural economics, development studies, marketing, market research, social sciences, statistics, data science or another relevant discipline.
• A bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline combined with appropriate directly relevant research experience may also be considered, in line with organizational policy.
• At least five-seven years of relevant professional experience in applied research, market research, survey research, development research or a related field.
• Experience implementing quantitative, qualitative or experimental research, with demonstrated ability to work across different methodological approaches.
• Practical experience developing research instruments and supporting field implementation using methods such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, observational research, concept testing or experiments.
• Practical experience in questionnaire development, digital survey programming, survey implementation and research quality assurance.
• Experience programming digital surveys using SurveyCTO, ODK, KoboToolbox or comparable platforms.
• Demonstrated willingness and ability to learn and apply new research tools, technologies and methodologies.
• Good understanding of survey logic, validation, variable construction, coding conventions, data dictionaries and data structures used for subsequent analysis.
• Experience experimenting with digital, AI-assisted or other emerging research methods would be an advantage rather than essential.
• Experience working with external research agencies, consultants, field teams or implementation partners, including supporting training, piloting and fieldwork follow-up.