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Research Associate, Market Data (6-Month Contract)

Job Title: Research Associate, Market Data (6-Month Contract)
Reports To: Founder/CEO
Level: Mid-Level
Location: Remote, anywhere in Nigeria. Available during West Africa business hours on working days for calls with the team, contributors and partners. Occasional travel for fieldwork, interviews and industry events
Job Type: Part- Time

About Communiqué

Communiqué Advisory is the research and advisory arm of Communiqué, a media and intelligence company with readers in over 100 countries. We help brands understand and shape the conversations that matter in African markets. Our work covers reputation management, media relations, creator strategy, and research-led reporting. We bring the same rigour behind our journalism and research to every client account, and we operate in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and beyond.

About the Role

Research runs through everything we do. For the next six months, its most important job is to build two data products for members of the Communiqué Inner Circle.

Benchmarks: what creators, sponsorships, advertising and media talent actually cost.

Funding and Money Flow: who funds this industry, which opportunities are open, and where the money is going.

Almost none of this is published anywhere. That is why it is worth paying for, and why it is hard to collect.

The Founder sets the research agenda and owns the relationships with funders and data partners. You execute it. That means running the collection system, verifying every submission, interviewing the people who know what things really cost, working with a small team of volunteers, and drafting the briefs and reports that carry our name.

This is a craft role, not a strategy role. The person who thrives here is satisfied with tracing a number back to its source, and would rather kill a finding than publish one we cannot defend.

The contract is deliberately specific. From the first day, you will know what success looks like at month three and month six, and so will we.

Key Responsibilities

About 95% of your time goes to the two Inner Circle data products. The rest is capped so it cannot crowd them out.
- Benchmarks: Run our five intake forms and give-to-get surveys. Collect rate cards, media kits, sponsorship decks and job ads. Interview media buyers, talent managers, recruiters and producers about what things really cost.

- Funding and money flow: Maintain the funder directory. Run the weekly sweep of every funder for new opportunities. Log past awards and deals so we can see each funder's real cycle.

- Verification and provenance: Review every new record within a week. Record its source, confidence level and USD equivalent. Enforce the rule that no figure is published without at least five data points. If a number is modelled rather than verified, say so before anyone has to ask.

- Drafting: Write the member briefs on major funding calls, the monthly members' Data Note and our quarterly benchmark reports, to a standard that needs editing rather than rewriting.

- Volunteer supervision: Brief, train, and review the work of three to five volunteers, who handle public desk research.

- Wider research support: Occasional figures and background for advisory, editorial and the Intelligence database, when the Founder asks.

Reviews, renewal and full-time conversion

We review progress on a fixed schedule, so nothing about the renewal decision should come as a surprise.

-Weekly: a 30-minute check-in with the Founder on the backlog, the sweep and anything blocked.

- End of month 1: confirm the collection system is running — forms live, volunteers briefed, first records reviewed.

- Month 3: formal review against the month-3 targets. If a source dries up through no fault of yours, we agree adjusted volume targets in writing here.

- Month 5: renewal decision. Meeting at least 80% of the month-6 targets (or being clearly on track to) and both non-negotiables earns an offer of renewal for a further six months, or conversion to the full-time Research Associate role once Inner Circle revenue can support it.

Who you are

- 2 to 4 years of experience in research, data, journalism, policy, consulting, or a related field

- Genuine competence with desk research, including the stubbornness to keep going when the obvious sources come up empty

- Comfortable with spreadsheets and structured data; experience with Airtable or a similar tool is a plus; familiarity with survey tools and basic statistics such as medians, ranges and outliers

- Confident asking people about money (rates, salaries, budgets) and trusted to keep what they tell you confidential

- Able to brief junior volunteers and review their work without redoing it

- Clear, clean written English, with the discipline to cite properly

- Accuracy under deadline, and the confidence to say "I could not verify this" rather than filling the gap

- Interest in Africa's media, culture, technology, or creative economy

- Able to manage your own priorities on a three-day week in a remote team

What you'll gain

- Your name on published research that investors, funders, policymakers, and press actually read and cite

- Direct mentorship from the Founder on how this industry works commercially, not just editorially

- Hands-on work building the only structured benchmarks of their kind on the continent

- A clear path to renewal, a full-time role and greater ownership of the research agenda, judged on targets you can see from day one

Compensation & Benefits

The fee is the full-time base pro-rated to three days a week, plus a bonus tied directly to the KPIs.

Monthly fee of ₦250,000 gross, paid against a monthly invoice and subject to any tax deductions required by law

- Internet allowance of up to ₦20,000 a month

- Fieldwork travel and event costs covered at cost, when approved in advance

- Completion bonus of up to ₦250,000 at the end of month 6, paid in proportion to the month-6 targets met

Tell us about yourself

How did you hear about this job?

We want to know how many podcast studios are operating commercially in Lagos. There is no register, no association, and no reliable list. Walk us through the first six hours of your search. Name the actual sources you would try, in order, and tell us what you would do when they run out.

You are drafting a section of a report. The key figure appears in three different articles, but all three trace back to the same press release, and the company behind it has not published a methodology. The deadline is tomorrow. What goes in the report?

In one week, 60 creator-rate submissions arrive. Some are in naira and some in dollars; three quote fees ten times higher than the rest; and two look like the same creator submitted twice. How do you decide what goes into the dataset, and what rules would you write down so a volunteer handles it the same way next time?

Tell us about a time you made a factual or analytical error in work that went out. How did it happen, how was it caught, and what did you change afterwards?

Tell us about a time you disagreed with a senior colleague or client on a communications decision. What did you do, and what happened?

Tell us what else you expect to work on during the contract, so we can spot any conflict of interest early.

Share one piece of research or analytical writing you produced. Tell us in a sentence which parts were yours.

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