Director of Academia Jobs

Prolific

Location:
United States, San Francisco

Category:
Sales

Contract Type:
Not provided

Salary:

150000.00 - 250000.00 USD / Year

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Job Description:

You'll lead Prolific's academic research segment as a fully empowered leader, owning strategy and operations for one of the most established and respected communities in online research. This is a pivotal moment for the segment: we're evolving our go-to-market approach to better serve institutions while strengthening our market position and deepening relationships with the research community. Your impact will be defining how we serve academia for the next decade. This is a strategy and operating role.

Job Responsibility:

Own the business: Accountability for the academic segment with ambitious growth targets
Lead and develop the customer-facing team, setting strategy for retention, activation, and expansion
Allocate resources and make investment decisions across growth levers and geographies
Define and track key metrics: retention curves, NPS, activation rates, institutional pipeline
Drive adoption via institutional contracts: Design and validate packaging, pricing, and value propositions for central university contracts
Build pipeline and pilot institutional contracts, proving the model and navigating complex buying committees
Develop sales playbook and enablement materials to scale institutional motion over time
Strengthen market position: Deepen engagement with the research community through advisory boards, partnerships, and advocacy programs
Direct the science team's thought leadership to reinforce our differentiation and credibility
Build and maintain relationships with senior academics and research community leaders
Monitor competitive landscape and provide strategic recommendations on partnerships and positioning
Operate cross-functionally: Partner with product to prioritize roadmap for academic use cases and institutional needs
Collaborate with marketing on positioning, campaigns, and community engagement
Work with data/analytics to surface insights on researcher behavior and segment health
Represent academic segment needs in executive strategy discussions

Requirements:

Deep academic market fluency: working in or selling research technology to academic/research markets
Proven business ownership: managing a business unit or revenue segment at $10M+ scale
Commercial leadership: Direct experience building or managing customer-facing teams of 10+ people
Enterprise/institutional sales experience: designed value propositions for institutional buyers, navigated multi-stakeholder sales, or led a self-serve to enterprise transition
Commercial rigor: Fluent in unit economics (CAC, LTV, retention, expansion)
Strategic independence: comfortable operating with minimal oversight, solving ambiguous problems and building cross-functional alignment

Nice to have:

Experience in both US and UK higher education markets
PhD, active involvement in academic research or earned trust through deep market experience
Track record in competitive or disrupted markets, counter-positioning, or defending market leadership

What we offer:

competitive salary
benefits
remote working
equity
cash variable element, such as a bonus or commission

Additional Information:

Job Posted:
December 11, 2025

Employment Type:

Fulltime

Work Type:

Hybrid work

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Director of Academia