Senior Research Associate

About the role

Spark is seeking a Senior Research Associate to join its Research team, working closely with the Senior Research Director and the Evidence and Strategy Manager. The role involves designing, managing, and delivering high‑quality research that supports Spark’s learning priorities.

Key responsibilities

• Own assigned research projects from initiation through delivery, including work plans, budgets, timelines, and coordination of inputs.
• Lead quantitative research activities, from design and measurement to analysis and dissemination, with some qualitative work preferred.
• Develop and maintain reproducible analytical workflows, including documented code, version control, and research documentation.
• Program, test, and deploy survey instruments and other research tools, and manage research datasets following reproducible practices.
• Analyze quantitative, qualitative, and geospatial data to answer research questions and translate findings into clear products such as visualisations, briefs, reports, and presentations.

Required profile

• Strong quantitative and analytical skills with the ability to independently manage all stages of a research project.
• Experience ensuring research activities meet standards for rigor, quality, and ethics.
• Ability to collaborate across research and program teams to align research with organizational priorities.

Required skills

• Reproducible data management and analytical workflow development.
• Version control and well‑documented coding practices.
• Survey programming and deployment.