About the job

Are you a scientist who thrives at the intersection of research and business? Do you love translating deep technical expertise into strategy, building trusted relationships with clients, and leading high-stakes research initiatives from first conversation to final deliverable? If so, we'd love to have you join our team!

We're a fast-paced, venture-backed B2B SaaS company on a mission to revolutionize the way R&D; professionals discover and leverage expertise. We operate a unique marketplace connecting innovators with a curated network of top-tier experts, powered by our core platform and supported by our AI tools: Research Compass, our citation-backed research assistant, and Atlas, our automated research and reporting engine.

We're seeking a full-time Research Lead to join our growing Research team. In this role, you'll be the scientific face of the company for our enterprise clients: leading client engagements, guiding expert scouting, driving pilot programs with prospective clients, and partnering with Client Success to grow existing accounts. This is a unique opportunity to combine doctoral-level scientific training with client leadership, strategic thinking, and high-impact written work.

Role Description

This is a full-time, hybrid (NYC-based) role as a Research Lead. The Research Lead will own client-facing research initiatives end-to-end, from scoping client needs and directing SME scouting through pilot execution, expansion conversations, and polished written deliverables, while serving as a trusted scientific advisor to clients and a mentor to junior team members.

What You'll Do

- Serve as the primary scientific point of contact for enterprise clients, translating their R&D; priorities into well-scoped research and expert engagement initiatives.
- Guide the SME scouting process: shape search strategy, set the bar for expert quality, and oversee identification,



vetting, and matching of experts to client needs.
- Lead pilot periods with prospective clients, staying deeply engaged from kickoff through evaluation and ensuring every pilot demonstrates explicit, measurable value.
- Partner with Client Success to identify and develop expansion opportunities within existing accounts, spotting new use cases and championing them with client stakeholders.
- Deliver compelling, polished demos of the NotedSource platform to clients, prospects, and experts, representing the company with scientific credibility and commercial fluency.
- Author high-quality written outputs, including white papers and case studies, that showcase the impact of our work.
- Stay ruthlessly organized across client requests, concurrent projects, and stakeholders, keeping trackers, pipelines, and internal teams aligned.
- Mentor Research Associates and help raise the bar for research quality across the team.

Who You Are

Must-haves:

- You are a recent PhD graduate in a technical field.
- You are an exceptional communicator, equally comfortable presenting to enterprise clients, interviewing academic experts, and demoing a product live while thinking on your feet.
- You have a demonstrated ability to produce high-caliber written work, from technical reports to persuasive client-facing documents like white papers and case studies.
- You are highly organized and proactive, capable of juggling multiple clients, projects, and stakeholders without letting anything slip.




- You are genuinely client-focused: you listen closely, anticipate needs, and take ownership of outcomes.

You'll thrive here if:

- You're energized by being client-facing and want your scientific expertise to directly shape commercial success.
- You're excited to work cross-functionally with sales, client success, product, and marketing to deliver holistic client value.
- You see pilots and expansions not as sales exercises but as opportunities to prove the value of great research.
- You embrace a data-driven approach to evaluating expertise and measuring the impact of client initiatives.

Who We Are

NotedSource is an AI-powered platform providing access to research information, expertise, and partnerships. Our platform streamlines the process of working with research experts and partners, making it easy for R&D; teams to manage projects, communicate with collaborators, and track progress. Alongside our core platform, we build AI research tools including Research Compass, which delivers citation-backed answers to research questions from a database of 220+ million academic papers, and Atlas, which produces literature reviews, company intelligence, and technology landscape reports for R&D; teams.

As a Research Lead, you'll work alongside these tools and help shape the research outputs our clients rely on.

Why Join Us?

This is a unique opportunity to take a leadership role at a company poised for significant growth. As a Research Lead, you'll own the client relationships that define our success, shape how enterprise R&D; teams engage with world-class expertise, and see your scientific judgment reflected in every pilot won and every account grown. You'll join a collaborative, innovative team where your contributions are valued, your growth is supported, and your work has real-world impact.

📌 Research Lead (Toronto)
🏢 NotedSource
📍 Toronto