Director, Insights Design and Behavioral Science

Surgo Foundation is a privately funded ‘action tank’ focused on bringing the latest innovations around behavior, tech, and data to global health and development. With a laser focus on uncovering the ‘why’ and developing precision solutions, we partner with organizations and governments to help unlock some of their biggest challenges. We work wherever inequities exist, whether in low-income countries or in the United States. And on major global issues such as reproductive health, maternal health, HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis, education, and housing.

Our multidisciplinary team includes development experts, data scientists, behavioral scientists, and technologists who are skilled in collecting and interpreting data on why people behave the way they do and how complex systems work, and in developing scalable solutions and tools. We are a small but diverse team with big plans.

The Director of Insights and Behavioral Science will conceptualize and lead key initiatives within Surgo. Examples include medication adherence, consumer tech engagement panels, and at scale monitoring of norms and beliefs. They will also lead the design and execution of multimodal studies to generate deep insights on specific programmatic initiatives. This role is critical to advancing our R&D agenda to develop innovative and scalable tools that generate actionable insights in low-resource settings and achieve health and social outcomes.

Role Description:

We are looking for an exceptional, creative, and entrepreneurial individual with a very strong background in insights design and behavioral science. As Director, your responsibilities will include:

  • Conceptualize and lead new initiatives

  • Design and execute Surgo Foundation’s research instruments

  • Develop and test experimental methods of behavioral and health systems data collection at scale

  • Synthesize the most cross cutting approaches from both the private and public sector, and apply these to different problems sets

  • Support analysis of large development data sets using statistical methods

  • Distill analyses into clear insights

  • Present to partners and collaborators and prepare scientific communication to journals and conferences

This position is ideal for a candidate who has a deep foundation in behavioral science, with extensive private-sector consumer research experience and/or public sector, looking to innovate on behavioral research in global health and development. This position requires deep technical knowledge in study design and experimental as well as observational research methods, and a passion to build innovative methodological solutions to solve the most pressing development problems. This role entails strong relationship management with a diverse set of partners, and collaborative work within the Surgo research team. We are looking for someone entrepreneurial in spirit, strong problem solver, and an excellent communicator. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the voice and influence strategy and delivery for an innovative, ambitious, and fast-growing organization.

The essentials:

  • PhD or MSc with concentration in behavioral science, experimental psychology, epidemiology, behavioral economics, sociology, anthropology, public health, or related fields

  • 8+ years of post-graduate behavioral research experience in the private consumer research sector, health sector, or public section. Experience in both private and public sector preferred.

  • Deep knowledge of behavioral science theory, the latest developments, and passion for translating advances in theory into practical solutions

  • Proven track record of designing and implementing qualitative and quantitative observational or experimental research at scale, using multiple research methods such as surveys, decision making experiments, implicit association tests, etc.

  • Experience with technology- based observational methods (e.g. mobile-based surveys)

  • Experience with rigorous study sample design

  • Some experience with questionnaire data analysis, data cleaning, and statistical inference/hypothesis testing

  • Passion for distilling concepts into frameworks and converting approaches into scalable tools

  • Excellent ability to digest and evaluate evidence from interdisciplinary literature

  • Excellent communication (written, verbal, and visual presentation) skills for both academic and nonacademic audiences. Publication record a plus.

Desirable:

  • Previous experience of working in global development or low-resource settings

  • Familiarity with building production-ready web- or mobile-based data collection pipelines

  • Experience in a fast-paced, private-sector consumer research environment (e.g. market research)

  • Experience of applying research into product development

  • Track publication record

Location: Washington, DC, USA

Compensation: Highly competitive compensation and benefits package

Travel: International and national travel (~20%)

Our Hiring Philosophy

We hire for passion and core competencies.

We look for problem solvers and lateral thinkers.

We love it if you have done different things with your time.

If you think you are ideal for this position, write to us even if you don’t have all the above preferred requirements.

Equal Opportunity and Diversity Policy

Surgo believes a diverse, inclusive staff makes us a stronger team and more impactful organization. We’re committed to a diverse team, and qualified people of all races, ethnicities, cultures, ages, sex, genders, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, languages, social class, marital status, religions, veterans status, and disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

Application

Interested applicants, please send your 1) resume/CV and 2) brief cover letter to Dr. Sema Sgaier, Executive Director, Surgo Foundation: jobs@surgofoundation.org

Closing date for applications: Accepted on a rolling basis

Desired start date: As soon as possible