Product Development Analyst - Product Team

Product Development Analyst
Hanover Research
Arlington, VA / Remote

Hanover Research is seeking a Product Development Analyst to support the full product development lifecycle across Hanover’s growing portfolio of productized research offerings — the data management, analysis, reporting, and AI-driven research platforms used by Hanover’s clients and research staff. The role’s first assignment is a new AI-powered platform that automates the design and delivery of professional-grade survey research. This is a great opportunity for a candidate seeking real product management responsibility across data products, software, and applied AI.

The Product Development Analyst will be responsible for understanding overall business goals and client needs, developing user stories and requirements to fulfill those goals, conducting user testing, and piloting new workflows — and, where features are AI-driven, translating AI capabilities into requirements and evaluating outputs against product intent. This role will report to the product owner and will collaborate closely with colleagues on Hanover’s Engineering and Research teams.

An ideal candidate is organized, collaborative, articulate, and a rigorous thinker who enjoys complex, ambiguous problems — and who has already gotten hands-on with modern AI tools. This person will have a passion for product development, will be comfortable making judgment calls amid ambiguity and compromise, and will seek to understand and deliver on Hanover’s business objectives. The successful candidate will take pride in knowing they are playing a pivotal role in building one of the growth engines of our company.

This role is designed to grow. We are not expecting a finished product leader on day one; we are hiring for trajectory. The analyst who succeeds here will take on steadily increasing ownership — from writing requirements and testing new features toward driving product decisions, shaping quality and evaluation strategy (including for AI-driven systems), validating what we ship against product intent rather than just functionality, and leading cross-functional workstreams. Candidates should be excited by that destination, even if they are not there yet.

  
Responsibilities

• Product Design

  • Participate in discovery, problem solving, and UX workshops; brainstorm ideas for how products can be improved, including where LLM and agent capabilities can strengthen research workflows

  • Write user stories; clearly and succinctly document requirements and acceptance criteria for product features, including prompt and workflow design for AI-driven features

  • Clearly communicate user stories and requirements to design and engineering colleagues, supporting the creation of wireframes and technical design

• Development Sprints

  • Participate full time in an Agile (Scrum) development process, working day-to-day within the engineering sprint cadence

  • As a feature owner, explain requirements and provide feedback to developers

  • Conduct user acceptance testing

• Quality & Evaluation

  • Test new features against product intent — does the product meet the standard a professional researcher would hold? — not just technical functionality

  • Help build and maintain evaluation frameworks for AI-driven features, including test cases, output quality rubrics, and automated eval runs

  • Document failure modes and edge cases, and translate findings into backlog priorities

• Product Support

  • Proactively gather user feedback to inform backlog prioritization and the product roadmap

  • Respond to user help requests and document bugs

  • Create and maintain training resources and reference documentation

  • Support cross-functional coordination — over time, running meetings, maintaining project documentation, and helping allocate work across contributors

Qualifications

• Superior level of personal organization and time management; builds the process and structure that hold quality under deadline pressure.

• Able to understand and creatively solve complex problems at various levels of abstraction — from systems-level design down to in-the-weeds detail.

• An ownership mindset: takes responsibility for user-facing outcomes rather than just assigned tasks, drives decisions forward under ambiguity, and knows which tradeoffs to escalate.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the confidence to constructively challenge a technical solution when it conflicts with the right product experience.

• Enjoys a collaborative working environment and seeks colleagues’ input.

• Demonstrable interest in productized research, data products, software, and product management.

• Enthusiasm for a steep learning curve: energized, not intimidated, by helping to build products that have not been built before.

Experience Requirement

• Bachelor’s Degree Required. Candidates are likely to have majored in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, or Social Sciences, but candidates of any academic background with interest are encouraged to apply.

• Approximately 1–5 years of professional experience in product, research, analytics, software, or a related field preferred: we are hiring an early-career to mid-level candidate to grow into significant product ownership, not a finished senior profile.

• Hands-on familiarity with modern AI systems — LLMs, prompt design, agent workflows, and/or output evaluation strongly preferred. Professional experience is valuable, but substantive personal projects and self-directed work count.

• Experience with Agile / SCRUM / Kanban (Nice to have)

• Experience with DevOps / Figma / Jira (Nice to have)

• Knowledge of product development methodologies (Nice to have)

• Familiarity with statistical methods and analytical approaches common to social science, including market research (Nice to have)

• Experience testing, evaluating, or performing QA on AI- or LLM-based systems (Nice to have)

Location  

USA Remote   

Office is located in Arlington, VA  
#Remote #LI-Remote   

Benefits

• Starting at 18+ days Paid Time Off

• 14 observed holidays, including Juneteenth, Indigenous People Day and personal floating days

• 401(K) employer matching programs

• Comprehensive health and dental benefits package

• Health and wellness packages with discounts to local gym

• Community service opportunities

• Unlimited snacks and beverages in office

Compensation   

Hanover Research strives to create compensation and benefits programs that are competitive, equitable and fair.  The compensation range for this role at the company is $60,000 – $90,000. Please note that the base salary offered is contingent on the candidate’s job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Our base pay range is determined by the role and the market.   

Hanover believes in supporting our team’s overall well-being now and in the future. We provide retirement benefits and 401K matching to help you plan ahead, wellness benefits to keep you healthy, medical coverage to lift you up if you or your dependents get sick, and paid time away to rejuvenate. You can learn more about our benefits on our Hanover Research Careers page or please talk to your Recruiter to learn more.  

How to Apply 
If you are interested in the prospect of working for a dynamic, fast-growing company, we encourage you to submit your resume and any other supporting materials.  

Hanover strives to be accessible to all users and job seekers. If you are a qualified individual with a disability and need assistance in accessing our website or completing a job application, please contact Hanover Research at 202-559-0050 or via email [email protected] All information you provide will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodation.    

About Hanover Research  
Founded in 2003, Hanover Research is a global research and analytics firm that delivers market intelligence through a unique, fixed-fee model to more than 1,000 clients. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, Hanover employs high-caliber market researchers, analysts, and account executives to provide a service that is revolutionary in its combination of flexibility and affordability. Hanover was named a Top 50 Market Research Firm by the American Marketing Association from 2015 to 2021. To learn more about Hanover Research, visit www.hanoverresearch.com  

Hanover Values  

• Business Building – We build our business quickly and intelligently and we help our clients do the same  

• Thought Leadership and Innovation – We strive constantly to deliver better information in a better way  

• Service – To our clients and our community, service is our guiding principle  

• Leadership and Mentorship – Our talent is our greatest asset, and we hope to help our people be their best  

• Firm Citizenship – We are optimists who believe there are endless possibilities for our company and ourselves  

Hanover Research provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to their race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, veteran status, age, marital status, familial status, genetic information, or status with regard to public assistance, or membership or activity in a local human rights commission, any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. You can learn more on our Equal Employment Page.