Research Associate

CIMMYT is a cutting-edge, non-profit, international organization dedicated to solving tomorrow’s problems today. It is entrusted with fostering improved quantity, quality, and dependability of production systems and basic cereals such as maize, wheat, triticale, sorghum, millets, and associated crops through applied agricultural science, particularly in the Global South, through building strong partnerships. This combination enhances the livelihood trajectories and resilience of millions of resource-poor farmers, while working towards a more productive, inclusive, and resilient agrifood system within planetary boundaries. CIMMYT is a core CGIAR Research Center, a global research partnership for a food-secure future, dedicated to reducing poverty, enhancing food and nutrition security, and improving natural resources. 

Key Responsabilities:

1. Portfolio Research Coordination and Workflow Management

• Coordinate assigned market intelligence studies, typically managing day-to-day activities across 2–3 studies at a time, to help ensure delivery against agreed scope, quality standards, budgets and timelines.
• Maintain study workplans, trackers, milestones and deliverable schedules; identify implementation risks or delays and raise issues requiring further direction with relevant staff.
• Coordinate agreed research workflows across questionnaire development, partner engagement and procurement, survey programming, piloting, field implementation and data handover.
• Coordinate between the internal research teams, country teams, procurement colleagues and external research partners for assigned studies.
• Support preparation of implementation plans, budgets, Terms of Reference, scopes of work and partner deliverables, based on agreed study requirements.
• Maintain organized study documentation and ensure key decisions, changes and implementation updates are recorded and communicated to relevant team members.

2. Research Design, Survey Review and Standardization

• Contribute to the design and implementation of quantitative, qualitative and experimental market research studies, selecting and adapting research tools appropriate to different research questions and respondent groups.
• Guide the development and implementation of research approaches including surveys, interviews, focus groups, observational approaches, concept or product testing, experiments and other appropriate market research methods.
• Explore, test and refine new research methods and tools that could strengthen market intelligence research, including appropriate applications of AI-assisted research tools, digital methods, video-based approaches and other emerging techniques.