Startups · AI

Program Manager - Research Operations

Outset · San Francisco · Remote

← All jobs
About Outset

Get the depth of qualitative interviews at the speed and scale of a survey with the power of AI-moderated research. Make better, faster decisions for your business. Backed by Y Combinator.

About the role

Own partner performance and communication, with a system to assess and continually optimize each partner's quality, reliability, and best-fit use cases. Negotiate preferred rates and commercial terms, and build the feasibility process (incidence rates, targeting, which vendor for which use case) that keeps recruitment predictable as volume grows.

What they're looking for

  • 5–10 years in research operations , participant recruitment, or panel/vendor management, with deep expertise in digital qualitative recruitment, experience with quantitative recruitment is a plus
  • Hands-on understanding of how participant recruitment actually works: panels and marketplaces, screeners, incidence and feasibility, soft launches, quotas, incentives, fraud, and quality control
  • Track record managing vendors and partners — selecting, negotiating, holding accountable, managing spend
  • Genuine program management ability — you can hold a messy, cross-functional problem in your head, sequence it, and drive it to a working system
  • Experience at both a large organization and a startup . We want the enterprise process instincts and the scrappiness to build fast without waiting for permission
  • Strong communicator — able to distill complex, cross-functional information into clear training, documentation, playbooks, and customer-facing content
More about this role

Outset invented a better way to do research: AI-powered user interviews.

Global brands like Hubspot, Microsoft, Uber and Nestle use Outset to achieve deeper, qualitative insights about their users at unprecedented speed and scale.

The research industry is massive (>$140B and growing) and ripe for disruption. Incumbents are outdated, slow, and burdened by high-cost services. That's our opportunity.

Outset is backed by top Silicon Valley investors and raised a $30M Series B in December 2025—less than six months after our Series A—led by Radical Ventures with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s venture arm), 8VC, Y Combinator, and Adverb Ventures.

The raise follows a breakout year, with our business growing 8x as enterprise customers across industries adopt our category, AI‑moderated research, as the new standard for understanding people.

We’re a tight-knit team serving some of the world’s largest enterprises.

Participant recruitment at Outset spans a global partner network, internal process, and the product experience itself — and this role owns all three. Rather than running recruitment study by study, you'll build the system that makes it predictable at scale. You'll be Outset's...

Read the full posting on Outset's site ↗

Customer Success

Build your edge while you search

Free tools for founders and investors, plus VC Unfiltered, our take on startups, venture and the people who build them.