Research Program Lead; PPM IV
Listed on 2026-03-01
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Research/Development
Data Scientist, Research Scientist, Research Analyst
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King County Metro is seeking a Research Program Lead to set the vision for and lead all aspects of Metro’s Research Program. This role is responsible for planning, overseeing, and guiding research, evaluation, and learning efforts that support monitoring and reporting and use of data-generated insights to inform decision‑making across the agency.
The Research Program Lead supervises four full‑time employees and a part‑time intern and ensures the team delivers relevant, credible, and actionable research. This includes overseeing and participating in research design, data collection (both qualitative and quantitative), analysis, synthesis, and development of clear reports, dashboards, and other tools that help Metro teams apply insights to their work.
This role partners closely with leaders and teams across Metro as well as external consultants and academic researchers to ensure research efforts align with business needs and agency priorities. The successful candidate will communicate and uphold the Research team’s vision, build strong internal and external relationships, support staff development, and promote an equitable, inclusive, and data‑informed culture across Metro.
This recruitment will be used to fill one Career Service position. In addition, this selection process may be used to generate an eligibility pool for future career service, term limited temporary, and special duty assignment vacancies that may occur in this classification within this workgroup. The eligibility pool will be retained for 12 months from the date of posting and may be used at the discretion of the hiring authority.
Job DutiesApplying equity and social justice principles is a daily responsibility and a foundational expectation for all King County employees. In this role, you will apply equity and social justice principles that exemplify shared values, behaviors, and practices to all aspects of the work.
As Research Program Lead, you will be responsible for setting a vision for, planning, supporting, and leading all aspects of the Metro’s Research Program’s work and you will support and supervise program staff, including 4 full‑time employees and a part‑time intern. This includes:
Specific tasks:
- Develop or oversee development of sound research and evaluation plans and/or learning agendas matched to the needs and questions of Metro teams or business units. Help to articulate research, evaluation, or learning questions and determine how best to pursue answers to those questions via sound sampling, appropriate data collection (surveys, interviews, focus groups, or compilation of secondary data), analysis, and synthesis of relevant data.
Advise on and/or oversee implementation of research/evaluation plans and learning agendas as needed. - Ensure the Research Program works effectively with individuals and groups across Metro, including leaders, work owners, and implementers and those with different disciplinary backgrounds, and provides timely and effective responses to requests for data and evidence.
- Lead, oversee, contribute to, or guide the design of any new agency‑led data collection efforts, including both qualitative and quantitative research studies (survey, focus groups, travel diaries, etc.). This includes weighing in on sampling design, methods, tools, and implementation to ensure the return of quality data.
- Lead, oversee, contribute to, or guide the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data using appropriate approaches and/or software tools (R, Power
BI, Qualtrics, etc.). - Lead, oversee, contribute to, or guide the synthesis of data from multiple sources to answer research, evaluation, and learning questions of interest to Metro business units, teams, or leaders.
- Ensure that data seekers and users across Metro have easy access to helpful tools and resources.
- Lead, oversee, contribute to, or guide preparation of approachable and actionable reports, data summaries, dashboards, or other…
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