Position Summary:

The Manager – Customer Research & Insights is a high-impact role for a researcher who loves getting close to the customer, connecting dots others don’t see, and influencing meaningful decisions across marketing, product, and operations. You won’t just “run research.” You’ll turn signals into strategy, helping Penske elevate customer experience across an entire ecosystem of transportation, logistics, and digital solutions.

If you want your work to be visible, valued, and woven directly into how a major enterprise grows — this is the place to do it.

Major Responsibilities:Drive Research That Moves the Business

• Own primary research end-to-end — discovery, design, execution, analysis, and storytelling.

• Deliver a mix of quantitative and qualitative programs: surveys, interviews, concept testing, segmentation, journey work, and more.

Transform Insights Into Action

• Build clear, compelling narratives that highlight business implications, not just data points.

• Influence senior partners by helping them see opportunities, risks, and customer truths they wouldn’t otherwise notice.

Become a Strategic Partner Across the Organization

• Collaborate with marketing, product, and operations leaders to define learning agendas and answer the questions that matter most.

• Bring a point of view and help teams make smarter decisions faster.

Raise the Bar for Customer Understanding

• Synthesize insights from primary research, secondary sources, and enterprise data systems into a unified customer view.

• Introduce fresh methodologies, tools, and thinking that push Penske’s insights practice forward.

Lead with Quality and Momentum

• Manage vendors and guide junior team members to ensure every project is delivered with excellence, speed, and clarity.

Other projects and tasks as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Social Sciences, or related fields required.

• Master’s preferred, if no Degree, work experience is required.

• Minimum 5 - 7 years of customer, market, or marketing research experience required.

• Leading complex, multi-stakeholder research programs from concept to final readout.

• Advanced knowledge in quantitative and qualitative research design and interpretation.

• Proficiency with tools like Qualtrics, SPSS (or similar), Excel, PowerPoint.

• Turning data into narratives that influence non-research stakeholders.

• Experience in B2B, operational environments, or hard-to-reach audiences, a plus.

• Regular, predictable, full attendance is an essential function of the job

• Willingness to travel as necessary, work the required schedule, work at the specific location required, complete Penske employment application, submit to a background investigation (to include past employment, education, and criminal history) and drug screening are required.

Physical Requirements:

• The physical and mental demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an associate to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
• The associate will be required to: read; communicate verbally and/or in written form; remember and analyze certain information; and remember and understand certain instructions or guidelines.
• While performing the duties of this job, the associate may be required to stand, walk, and sit. The associate is frequently required to use hands to touch, handle, and feel, and to reach with hands and arms. The associate must be able to occasionally lift and/or move up to 25lbs/12kg.
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and the ability to adjust focus.

Penske is an Equal Opportunity Employer: