Senior Research Lead; Thought Leadership), Customer Insights

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Marketing & Communications

Salesforce is the #1 AI CRM, where humans with agents drive customer success together. Here, ambition meets action. Tech meets trust. And innovation isn't a buzzword - it's a way of life. The world of work as we know it is changing and we're looking for Trailblazers who are passionate about bettering business and the world through AI, driving innovation, and keeping Salesforce's core values at the heart of it all.

Join Salesforce's Customer Insights team, a core function within the marketing organization responsible for delivering objective, actionable insights that shape our marketing strategy and external narrative.

As Research Lead you will own research across two of the team's most visible programs:
Buyer Insights, which informs how Salesforce goes to market, and Thought Leadership, which shapes our external narrative through major public-facing reports. You bring both research rigor and editorial instinct: you know how to design a credible study and how to make the findings land.

This is a hand-on role for someone with strong research instincts, a curiosity about buyers and the broader market landscape, and the drive to turn findings into stories that influence real decisions. Experience using AI to accelerate and enhance research work is a must.

• Lead and Execute Primary Research.
• Lead Buyer Insights Research:
  Design and execute research that builds a deep understanding of Salesforce's buyers (e.g., CIO, CDO studies), their motivations, pain points, and decision-making dynamics to deeply inform internal decision-making and strategic marketing for key products like Agentforce. Translate findings into recommendations that inform go-to-market strategy, product marketing, and competitive positioning.
• Drive Thought Leadership Research Programs :
  Own your portion of the team's major public‑facing research portfolio, including large-scale annual "State of" reports (e.g., State of Service , State of IT ). Manage the full lifecycle from study design through external publication, working closely with PR and Marketing to ensure findings are accurate, compelling, and ready for the world.
• Design and Execute Mixed‑Method Studies:
  Translate business questions into research plans that draw on the right mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. Work with external suppliers for most studies, and get hands‑on when speed demands it, whether that means programming a survey or pulling a crosstab yourself.
• Synthesize Across Programs. Connect dots across buyer insights, thought leadership findings, and other team research to surface integrated conclusions. The most valuable insights often live at the intersection of multiple studies.
• Drive Stakeholder Alignment and Research Strategy. Scope studies with a clear point of view on what they'll answer and why it's worth the investment. Build the case compellingly when budget needs to comes from stakeholders - connecting the research to decisions they already care about. Proactively engage stakeholders to ensure research is scoped, prioritized, and positioned to drive real decisions.
• Data Visualization & Storytelling. Translate quantitative findings into clear, compelling visuals that communicate a "so what" to any audience. Strong data storytelling - choosing the right chart, framing the right narrative, and building slides that drive decisions - is as critical in this role as strong writing.
• Bring a Storyteller's Instinct. Understand how findings connect to the market's broader narrative, what resonates with media and business…