Research Associate

Kitces.com is hiring a Research Associate to assist in the production of our four semi-annual Kitces Research studies on financial advicers (Productivity, Marketing, Technology, and Wellbeing, conducted at rotating 6-month intervals over a 2-year cycle) as well as expand the reach of our findings. This includes building surveys in Alchemer, monitoring the quality of incoming responses, cleaning and wrangling data using Stata, visualizing data using Microsoft Excel, and promoting our findings across our social media channels.

So, if you have strong attention to detail and enjoy being hands-on at every stage of the research process—carefully crafting survey questions, writing Stata scripts to clean data and extract insights, visualizing data to tell a compelling story, debriefing with your team to refine processes moving forward, and have been frustrated by the fact that academic research often only reaches a handful of readers and would be excited by the opportunity to collaborate on research that is read by thousands of people every month, then this is the job for you!

Description/Responsibilities

This entirely virtually-based staff position will report to the Director of Advisor Research and will work closely with the Chief Financial Planning Nerd as well as the Editorial Team.

The Research Associate will have the following responsibilities related to the production of our four ongoing research studies on financial advicers:

• Collaborate with the team on the design of survey instruments
• Program surveys in Alchemer, including adding new questions, updating or enhancing the set-up of existing questions, and specifying field validation and branching logic to expedite the survey process and maximize engagement and usable responses.
• Update past Stata scripts for current studies, including adding new routines where applicable and refining existing routines
• Visualize and analyze the data to identify key insights for advicers
• Participate in quality assurance reviews throughout the process, including reviewing the survey draft prior to launch, monitoring the quality of incoming survey responses to identify potential bugs in the survey, double-checking all calculations before handing off the research study to the Editorial Team and graphic designer, and proof-reading the final draft design copies of the report before they are published

The Research Associate will also have the following additional responsibilities:

• Support team members by providing data analysis to writers, the Chief Financial Planning Nerd, and other team members, including building any required data visualizations and/or presentations using the results
• Keep anonymized internal data organized to share with key external authors and to make available to universities
• Maintain the Kitces FinTech (and future Service) Map and Directory databases with monthly updates to ensure data is properly rendered on maps/directories
• Implement and optimize the Kitces Research social media calendar to draw web traffic to the landing pages of our research studies
• Assist the Director of Research in tracking key department data and drawing insights from this data to improve internal workflows/processes

Over time, candidates interested in data visualization and graphic design will have the opportunity to build publication-ready figures for our research studies and blog posts.

Key Candidate Traits

Candidates for Kitces opportunities should be self-motivated enough to work in a virtual environment (autonomous), have an extremely strong inclination for continuous learning (self-development), an immaculate attention to detail (organized and efficient), a service mindset (seeks to collaborate and to help and support others), and an ability to work in a changing environment (adaptability).

Candidates for the Research Associate position should maintain a strong focus on data integrity. Ideal candidates will demonstrate a (healthy) obsession with the quality of their work, a willingness to ask questions when needed, and the ability to engage in proactive conversations with team members to ensure deadlines are met without compromising the quality of their work.

Candidates are also expected to have experience working on research projects from start to finish, while meeting deadlines and maintaining quality.

Required Skills

• Experience writing survey questions and building surveys using tools such as Qualtrics or Alchemer
• Proficient in data cleaning and wrangling large-N survey data using Stata, including writing neatly organized .do files, creating new variables, and running descriptive analyses (e.g., conditional means/medians)
• Proficient in data analysis, wrangling, and visualization using Excel, including VLOOKUP, pivot tables, and creating easy to interpret tables and charts

Preferred Skills

• Formal education or industry experience related to financial planning
• Proficient in data cleaning, wrangling, and visualization using R (including writing neatly organized scripts, creating new variables, and running descriptive analyses, experience using Quarto Pub, and creating easy to interpret tables and charts)
• The ability to run multivariate statistical analyses in R and/or Stata (e.g., linear and non-linear regressions, dimension reduction strategies)
• Experience using Alchemer
• Experience implementing social media content calendars

Candidates must be legally authorized and available to work primarily within the United States. Kitces.com does not sponsor visas at this time.

Candidates must be able to work at a computer for up to 8 hours a day and travel to attend two in-person retreats per year.

Compensation/Benefits

• Base salary $62,000 – 74,000/year based on experience
• Available annual bonus up to 12% of base salary, determined by meeting key Members Section and other business metrics
• Home office setup (laptop, second monitor, etc.) provided upon hire
• $1,000 annual budget for technology hardware/software or related office materials
• $2,500 annual budget for additional training/skills education
• $2,500 annual conference budget
• Paid membership in a relevant membership association and for a relevant professional designation or certification
• 15 days of PTO (combined vacation and sick), 6 national holidays, and 2 floating holidays
• Participation in company health plan
• Participation in company 401(k) plan
• “No-meeting” Wednesdays

What it’s like working at Kitces.com

We are a team that lives by our values, our support of one another and our commitment to the community we serve. The successful candidate will share these Kitces Core Values:

• Do the Right Thing
• Advisors First
• Be the Trusted Source
• Deposit More Than We Withdraw
• No A$$holes
• Get Your Nerd On

At Kitces.com we have all but eradicated internal email. All internal communication is done via Slack, or through Asana tasks.

When on Slack calls, video is expected as we believe hearing voices and seeing faces makes for stronger communication and connections. We lean on technology tools to get things done and protect our time. An example is our use of the delayed-send on Slack messages. While anyone might have a great idea pop up at any time, we are careful to make sure messages are only sent during regular business hours to respect the work/home boundaries of our work-from-home (or work-from-anywhere) team.

As a company we try to front load meetings to the beginning of the week so that the end of the week can be more focused on Deep Work to maximize our personal productivity.

While, as a remote company, we tend to attract a lot of introverts, we also recognize the value in creating work relationships, so we have a social committee that creatively offers a multitude of ways for people to connect in the ways they feel most comfortable.

To Apply:
Interested candidates for the Research Associate position should complete the initial application form. Questions can be directed to [email protected].

General Application

About Kitces.com

The mission of Kitces.com is to help financial advicers be better and more successful, creating a 100X multiplier effect for our work and the number of consumers we can positively impact with the power of financial planning delivered by a Kitces-supported financial advicer to their clients.

To achieve this mission, Kitces.com publishes the leading financial planning industry blog Nerd’s Eye View, producing award-winning commentary on financial planning strategies and practice management trends for financial advisors ranked as the most Influential, Objective, Relevant, and Useful content amongst any online media publication for financial advisors. In addition, our Members Section provides additional white papers, webinars, training courses to master essential skills, and the opportunity for financial planning professionals to earn Continuing Education credits, and we are invited to speak regularly at financial advisor conferences across the US and around the world to present our analysis and insights.

Unlike traditional media sites, though, Kitces.com deliberately generates no revenue from advertising or sponsored content. Instead, we remain solely focused on creating value directly for the financial advicer community, strengthening the awareness of and integrity of the Kitces brand, and being compensated directly from our readers both on our site (for those who join our Members Section, hire us to speak about financial planning topics or engage us to consult on our Kitces Research), and through our co-owned financial services solutions for consumers (who may engage with our related financial advisory firms) as well as our business solutions for financial advisors themselves (for whom we have a number of businesses providing service and technology solutions for advisory firms).

What’s it like working at Kitces.com

We are a team that lives by our values, our support of one another and our commitment to the community we serve. The successful candidate will share these Kitces Core Values:

• Do the Right Thing
• Advisors First
• Be the Trusted Source
• Deposit More Than We Withdraw
• No A$$holes
• Get Your Nerd On

At Kitces.com we have all but eradicated internal email. All internal communication is done via Slack, or through Asana tasks.

When on Slack calls, video is expected as we believe hearing voices and seeing faces makes for stronger communication and connections. We lean on technology tools to get things done and protect our time. An example is our use of the delayed-send on Slack messages. While anyone might have a great idea pop up at any time, we are careful to make sure messages are only sent during regular business hours to respect the work/home boundaries of our work-from-home (or work-from-anywhere) team.

As a company we try to front load meetings to the beginning of the week so that the end of the week can be more focused on Deep Work to maximize our personal productivity.

While, as a remote company, we tend to attract a lot of introverts, we also recognize the value in creating work relationships, so we have a social committee that creatively offers a multitude of ways for people to connect in the ways they feel most comfortable.

Other Benefits (please note, some benefits may vary based on seat):

• Quarterly bonuses that are paid out up to 3% of base salary/quarter (or 12% of base salary/year), for meeting Members Section growth targets. The average quarterly bonus over the last 3 years has been 2.4%.
• Discretionary budgets to support formal education and conference attendance.
• Computer set up is provided to every new full-time hire and is maintained and replaced regularly
• Home Office budget at $1,000/year, which can be used for creating a comfortable and productive at-home work environment.
• Paid membership in a relevant membership association and for a relevant professional designation or certification
• Generous paid time off policy
• 6 national holidays
• Participation in company health plan, which is supplemented by a company contribution of $360/month
• Participation in company 401(k) plan

To Apply:
Interested candidates should complete the application form. Questions can be directed to [email protected].