Research Survey Jobs in Reston, VA (NOW HIRING)

Technical Assent is a federal consulting firm that helps government organizations improve services, programs, and mission outcomes through human-centered design, customer experience, research, analytics, and practical implementation support. We work with federal clients to understand customer and employee needs, measure experience, generate actionable insights, and help leaders make evidence-based decisions.

Technical Assent is seeking a Senior Consultant to lead customer experience, employee experience, survey research, and applied social science research projects for federal clients. This role is designed for an experienced research professional who can independently develop research plans, design survey instruments, guide sampling and analysis approaches, oversee survey implementation, interpret findings, and advise clients.

The successful candidate will combine applied research judgment with practical consulting delivery. They should be comfortable designing defensible research approaches, working hands-on with survey and analytics platforms, leading client conversations, supervising junior staff, and translating data into clear insights and recommendations.

This is not an academic research role. It is an applied consulting role for someone who can use strong research methods to help government clients make better decisions, improve services, and measure customer, employee, and stakeholder experience.

The Senior Consultant will lead and support federal CX, EX, and applied research projects by performing responsibilities such as:

• Designing research plans for customer experience, employee experience, program evaluation, stakeholder research, and public-sector service improvement projects.
• Developing survey instruments, sampling approaches, analysis plans, reporting frameworks, and data collection strategies.
• Advising clients on research design, survey methodology, question wording, response options, sampling, weighting, statistical testing, qualitative coding, and interpretation of results.
• Leading or overseeing survey configuration, testing, fielding, monitoring, and quality assurance in Qualtrics and related platforms.
• Translating client goals and program questions into practical research designs and measurable constructs.
• Developing data analysis approaches that may include descriptive statistics, cross-tabulations, segmentation, trend analysis, statistical comparisons, weighting, open-ended response coding, and mixed-methods synthesis.
• Creating or overseeing creation of dashboards, reports, briefings, codebooks, data files, and executive-ready findings using tools such as Excel, Qualtrics dashboards, Power BI, Tableau, or similar platforms.
• Interpreting quantitative and qualitative findings and translating them into clear implications, recommendations, and decision support for federal leaders.
• Leading client meetings, research design discussions, working sessions, briefings, and status updates.
• Managing research workstreams, coordinating junior staff, reviewing deliverables, and ensuring work is accurate, useful, and delivered on schedule.
• Supporting project managers with scope, schedule, level-of-effort planning, risks, assumptions, and delivery quality.
• Helping develop reusable methods, templates, quality control practices, and documentation standards for Technical Assent's research and survey work.
• Supporting proposals, capture efforts, past performance writeups, solutioning, or technical approaches from time to time.
• Contributing to a consulting culture focused on practical insight, methodological rigor, client trust, and measurable mission impact.

• At least 5 years of directly relevant experience in survey research, customer experience research, employee experience research, social science research, market research, program evaluation, user research, public policy research, or related applied research work.
• Experience designing and executing applied research studies from research questions through data collection, analysis, reporting, and recommendations.
• Hands-on experience with Qualtrics, including survey design, configuration, testing, distribution, data exports, and/or dashboards.
• Experience developing survey instruments and advising on question wording, logic, response scales, respondent experience, and data quality.
• Experience developing or implementing sampling plans, analysis plans, statistical testing approaches, weighting approaches, qualitative coding methods, or mixed-methods research designs.
• Experience analyzing survey or research data and developing clear findings, implications, and recommendations.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Excel and experience using Qualtrics dashboards, Power BI, Tableau, or similar reporting and visualization tools.
• Ability to lead client conversations and explain research methods, findings, tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations clearly to non-technical audiences.
• Ability to manage research workstreams, review the work of junior staff, and ensure deliverables are accurate, well-structured, and client-ready.
• Strong written communication skills, including experience developing reports, briefings, research plans, findings summaries, or client deliverables.
• Strong consulting skills, including responsiveness, judgment, organization, and comfort working across multiple projects or stakeholders.
• U.S. citizenship.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a public trust clearance or security clearance, if required.

• Master's degree or PhD in social science, psychology, sociology, public policy, statistics, survey methodology, industrial/organizational psychology, human-centered design, market research, data analytics, or a related field.
• Direct experience supporting federal government clients.
• Experience with customer experience, employee experience, voice-of-customer, human-centered design, service design, or public-sector program evaluation.
• Experience with Medallia, Alchemer, SurveyMonkey, Forsta, Confirmit, or other survey or VOC platforms.
• Familiarity with Section 508 accessibility, privacy requirements, data protection practices, or FedRAMP environments.
• Familiarity with OMB/PRA requirements or federal survey clearance processes.
• Experience using SPSS, R, Python, SQL, or other statistical/data analysis tools.
• Experience developing codebooks, data dictionaries, data files, weighting documentation, dashboards, and recurring reporting products.
• Experience supporting proposals, capture, pricing assumptions, past performance narratives, or technical solution development.
• Experience mentoring junior researchers, analysts, or consultants.

A strong candidate for this role is someone who:

• Can design a defensible research approach without overcomplicating the work.
• Understands both methodological rigor and the practical realities of federal consulting delivery.
• Can lead a client / stakeholder community  from a broad problem statement to a clear research plan, useful findings, and actionable recommendations.
• Is comfortable reviewing survey logic, data files, dashboards, statistical outputs, and narrative reports.
• Can mentor junior staff while still working hands-on as the project requires.
• Communicates research findings in a way that helps leaders make decisions.

This role may be remote or hybrid, depending on project and company needs. Limited travel may be required, typically less than 10%.

The expected salary range for this role is $100,000 to $130,000, depending on experience, qualifications, location, and level.

Technical Assent is passionate about services - in government, business, and not-for-profit. We design exceptional service experiences, engineer them to be robust, and deliver real capability and business outcomes for our clients. You will be working on government programs that have strategic importance to our client.  Your team will work IN and ON the client's core mission - helping them to deliver their services day-to-day while simultaneously looking for opportunities to improve.  Our work is Driven by Evidence, Grounded in Understanding, and Focused on Impact.  

We look for these attributes in our teammates.

• Our team combines the creative and the pragmatic to deliver the results that matter most to our clients.  We see beauty when art and science come together.
• We seek self-starters, people who are confident in tackling challenges independently and bringing this to high-performing teams.  We continually seek feedback from our customers and employees, looking for opportunities to grow.
• We are a small company which gives you an essential voice in shaping our culture.  You will help grow our culture, and you will grow from the experience, too.

You will be part of a team to take an improvement concept and transform it into a capability - an asset that provides measurable value to our client's mission.  The team will work with users, prototype, develop, and deliver new capabilities.  We hold ourselves accountable to impacting outcomes.

• Flexible PTO
• Healthcare coverage (medical, dental, vision)
• FSA and HSA
• Short and long-term disability
• 401(k) with employer contributions, training and wellness allowances, and commuter benefits.