Lead Research Analyst - Industrials

ABOUT QUALITATE Qualitate is building the AI-native primary intelligence platform for enterprises, investment firms, and asset managers. We automate the entire primary research workflow, from study design and expert recruitment through AI-moderated interviews and insight synthesis - replacing weeks of manual research with hours of high-signal output. Expert research is a broken industry dominated by legacy incumbents with expensive, manual, and slow services. Investment and corporate strategy teams spend hundreds of hours coordinating intermediaries, scheduling expert calls, and synthesizing insights across fragmented providers. The process takes weeks to produce short-lived intelligence. Qualitate transforms this workflow by autonomously conducting expert discussions at scale using AI. Qualitate’s AI Moderator interviews thousands of experts simultaneously each month, capturing forward-looking purchasing plans, competitive displacement, and real-time ROI signals. The platform turns these interviews into quantified, time-series outputs tracking over 10,000 public and private companies, queryable instantly in natural language. Our customers include some of the world’s largest enterprises, hedge funds, PE firms, credit investors, and venture capital firms. THE ROLE We're looking for a Lead Research Analyst to own Qualitate's Industrials coverage. This is a new launch; you'll be the first domain expert in the seat, and you'll define what industrials research looks like at Qualitate from day one. Industrials is one of the most difficult sectors to read in real time. The signal doesn't sit in filings or sell-side models - it sits with the plant managers, distributors, procurement leads, and channel partners who see order books, lead times, pricing, and capex intent months before any of it shows up in company earnings prints. Investors and operators run their processes through those conversations. Qualitate has already solved this in several other industries, and demand for industrials coverage has been loud enough that we're now running the same playbook here. Reporting to the Director of Research, you'll shape the industrials research roadmap, decide what we cover and when, and publish the insights that establish this coverage in the market. You'll be in front of investors and corporate teams, and you'll be accountable for the outcomes: the quality of the research, its predictive accuracy, and the reputation of Qualitate's industrials franchise. WHAT THE DAY-TO-DAY LOOKS LIKE: • Leverage the company’s proprietary datasets to uncover insightful company and market trends across advanced manufacturing, automotive, construction and building products, HVAC and mechanical services, and specialty chemicals for investment funds and corporate clients. • Develop forward-looking analyses and uncover industry dynamics, key growth drivers, and demand shifts across themes including industrial capex cycles, factory automation and reshoring, aftermarket and service attach rates, input cost pass-through, and vehicle platform transitions. • Contribute thought leadership by creating high-impact content for our newsletter and client communications. • Clearly and effectively communicate actionable insights to clients and prospects through calls, webinars, and events. • Contribute domain expertise and research judgement to hone the fidelity of our first-to-market research methodology; partner with product and engineering teams on design to continue the creation of our best-in-class AI-native research platform. • Stay ahead of emerging trends, technologies, and innovators shaping the future of industrial production - from connected equipment and predictive maintenance to environmental health and safety mandates, agriculture technology, and more. WHO THIS ROLE IS FOR • 3+ years professional experience in data-driven research creation. Equity research, financial analysis, market research, and/or consulting roles. • You understand the fundamental research workflow. How funds source ideas and build conviction through data and primary research. You can articulate how Qualitate fits into that process in the terms buyers actually care about. You know which metrics matter to Industrials investment decisions - backlog and book-to-bill, capacity utilization, pricing versus volume, and how each of these compares to the consensus opinion. • In-depth knowledge of several key Industrials sectors, with domain expertise in some, but not necessarily all, of the following areas: Advanced Manufacturing, Automotive, Construction & Building Products, HVAC & Mechanical Services, Specialty Chemicals, Agriculture Technology, Environmental Health & Safety, and other emerging fields. • You communicate your ideas clearly. Long-form and short-form writing expertise required - you must be able to synthesize data into digestible, forward-looking insights. You should feel comfortable talking to investors and corporate strategy clients as an authority on Industrials. • You experiment heavily with AI. You’re constantly testing and refining AI tools and agents as they ship, and build them into your daily workflows - automating pieces of your own job to drive higher productivity - and sharing learnings with your team. WHAT SETS YOU APART • A strong sense of ownership. Our proprietary methodology has been applied to several industries; you’ll lead its extension and deepening across Industrials. You’ll define what we collect, from whom, and how often - then turn that into a market-defining research product that clients pay for. You’ll have full ownership over our coverage strategy and research direction in the space, with full autonomy to identify emerging areas of focus that define the ever-changing landscape. • An analytical mind. You get excited about diving into a large semi-structured dataset to understand key inflections and generate new ideas. Proficiency in managing/analyzing large data sets. SQL experience is strongly preferred. • A real map of the value chain. You know where the useful information sits in this industry - plant and operations management, distribution and dealer networks, EPC contractors, procurement organizations, and aftermarket service teams - and you know that the interesting answer is usually a step or two removed from the company being discussed. • You use AI for both speed and rigor. You understand that AI can be used to both accelerate your initial learning in a space and help you go deeper than you otherwise could have - pressure-testing ideas, automating the analyses you never had time for, and expanding what one analyst can rigorously cover. • You learn and iterate quickly. You’ll be working alongside accomplished professionals across research, product, and engineering. Pick up what they know and implement; impart what’s incremental onto them. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS • Base salary: $140k–$200k • Bonus: Variable dependent on achievement of goals at the company level, team level, and individual level • Equity: Meaningful early-stage grant with upside tied to company growth • Benefits: Health coverage, flexible PTO, paid holidays • Location: Full-time, in-person in New York City WHAT TO EXPECT WORKING AT QUALITATE • Excellence. You’ll be held accountable to an exceptionally high bar and impact. • High velocity. Fast paced work environment in terms of growth, decision making, and time to impact. • High agency. Ownership over how you work, not just what you work on. We hire people we trust to figure it out. • A builder’s mindset. You'll create the processes, playbooks, and systems that define how this company scales. • Shared ambition. A small, early team disrupting the multi-billion dollar market research industry with AI. • Joy. We work hard and genuinely enjoy working with each other. Dedication to our work is matched only by our passion for fostering an enjoyable, collaborative work environment.   Qualitate is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply.