Staff Research Operations Lead

We are on a mission to pioneer the world’s next era of play. As we grow across Europe and Latin America, we’re building The Playstack - the technology powering the next generation of sports, gaming, and fan experiences. Join us, and help make it the most widely used platform in the world!

From operations, to marketing, to product, we are looking for talented people who will shape how millions of customers play, watch, and connect every day.

About The Role

The Staff Qualitative Researcher is Superbet's most senior practitioner of human-centred inquiry. This is a hands-on, high-output IC role. You are the person who knows how to get to the truth of a user's experience: their mental models, their anxieties, their unspoken expectations, their moments of delight and frustration.

You will lead qualitative research across the most strategically important and ambiguous product questions Superbet faces - from understanding how new markets experience sports for the first time, to uncovering the emotional dynamics of live in-play gambling, to defining what responsible gaming actually feels like from a user's perspective. You will work closely with the Principal Quant Researcher and the Research Manager to ensure qualitative and quantitative evidence are always richer together than apart. You bring methodological mastery, creative curiosity, and the kind of presence that makes participants forget they're being observed and leaders believe you shape company wide narratives.

You also bring a future positive mindset: you are actively integrating AI tools into your workflow to do more, faster, without sacrificing the depth that makes qual irreplaceable. You know when AI is helpful and when it is not and can help junior researchers make decisions around when to use them. What You Will Own Deep Qualitative Research Execution Design and independently execute complex, multi-method qualitative research programmes spanning generative discovery, concept exploration, and evaluative depth - not just individual studies but longitudinal programmes of inquiry.

Lead the most high-stakes and ambiguous research briefs: new market entry, new product category launches, trust and safety research, responsible gambling insights, and strategic bets where the organisation has the least existing evidence. Operate the full qualitative toolkit with mastery: semi-structured and unstructured in-depth interviews, contextual inquiry and ethnographic observation, diary studies and longitudinal panels, participatory design workshops, focus groups, co-creation sessions, and remote moderated/unmoderated studies. You have deep expertise in mental models, perception, jobs to be done and combining them to paint a rich psychological and workflow design.

Own recruitment strategy end-to-end: define screeners, work with research ops and vendors, build proprietary panels where needed, and ensure participant samples are representative of the diversity of Superbet's user base across markets. Produce analysis that goes beyond surface themes: you apply systematic coding, grounded theory approaches, interpretive phenomenological analysis, or jobs-to-be-done frameworks - selecting the analytical lens that fits the question, not the one that's familiar. You inspire product teams to take action and drive progress.

You can handle different levels of exposure to research within the company and convert colleagues to champions. AI-Enhanced Qualitative Workflows Lead the integration of AI tooling into Superbet's qualitative research practice - not as a replacement for human interpretation but as a force multiplier that increases throughput and analytical depth. Deploy LLM-assisted transcript analysis pipelines that handle first-pass thematic coding, anomaly flagging, and cross-participant pattern detection - freeing analyst time for higher-order interpretation.