Applied Methodologist

Description

What is the role?

Zencity’s surveys help state and local governments understand and respond to the needs of their residents. Our research enables clients to effectively tackle many of their most critical challenges in areas such as infrastructure spending, economic development, and police transparency. With the insights from these surveys, leaders are able to make more informed decisions and deliver better results for their communities.

As a Applied Methodologist, you will operationalize and apply Zencity’s methodological standards within the Professional Services department. Reporting to the Lead Methodologist, you will ensure that Zencity’s research and data methodologies are consistently and accurately implemented across high-impact client deliverables. You will translate the organization’s methodological guidelines into clear, actionable analytical work—supporting custom studies, advanced analyses, and complex client engagements. In this role, you will help local government leaders deeply understand their community’s needs by delivering insights that are rigorous, contextualized, and aligned with each client’s priorities. You will also serve as a methodological partner to PS colleagues, providing guidance, mentorship, and quality assurance to ensure all Professional Services outputs meet Zencity’s standards of reliability and integrity.

Responsibilities

• Apply Zencity’s methodological standards across Professional Services deliverables - including survey analysis, custom research, and model-informed insights—to ensure accuracy, consistency, and rigor in all client-facing work.
• Partner with Professional Services, Customer Success, and Product teams to implement best-practice analytical methods and translate methodological guidelines into clear, actionable outputs for clients.
• Serve as a primary methodological resource for the Professional Services team, offering clear guidance and contributing to client-facing materials that explain and contextualize methodological choices.
• Work with operations and delivery teams to ensure data collection processes align with standards and are appropriately adapted to each community’s context and project needs.
• Collaborate with product experts, and PS colleagues to develop and improve tools for benchmarking, visualization, monitoring, and integration with public datasets.
• Support and mentor PS analysts on methodological topics, providing QA on complex analyses and strengthening the team’s ability to interpret and communicate insights with confidence.
• Work hybrid (New York), with occasional travel for client meetings, team gatherings, or professional events.

Qualifications

• Expertise in survey research methods, including online / multimodal surveys and non-probability approaches, with at least 3 years of hands‑on experience applying these methods to real‑world programs or products.
• Strong proficiency in quantitative analysis using Python (highly preferred) or R, including data cleaning, statistical models, and visualization, and a willingness to learn more.
• Demonstrated success communicating technical findings to non‑technical audiences through written reports and live presentations.
• Experience working with major public datasets such as those from the US Census Bureau and other federal agencies.

Its even better if you have

• An advanced degree or formal training in survey methodology, political science, microeconomics, demography, statistics, or a related field.
• Fluency in SQL, advanced Python skills, and/or machine learning expertise.
• Experience with geospatial analysis, survey experiments, data quality monitoring, multimodal research, or CRM systems.
• Experience working with national statistical datasets such as the American Community Survey, Current Population Survey, or the ONS National Census Data (UK).
• Subject matter expertise in local government operations, public opinion research or related topics.