---
title: 'Senior Research Scientist, Executive Engagement & Insights at Syndio'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-research-scientist-executive-engagement-insights-syndio-united-states-zmrwxzfh0e58'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-24'
---

# Senior Research Scientist, Executive Engagement & Insights at Syndio

- **Company:** Syndio
- **Location:** United States
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-24
- **Apply:** https://synd.io/careers/?gh_jid=6203653004

## Job description

Do you want to empower organizations to build smarter compensation strategies while ensuring fair pay for all employees?

Syndio is the leading pay governance and compensation intelligence platform. We help organizations make better pay decisions at every stage of the compensation lifecycle, from leveling and offers to promotions and merit. Our platform gives HR, compensation, and finance leaders the data and decision support they need to govern pay fairly, compliantly, and with confidence. We partner with many of the world’s most recognized and respected enterprises, helping them implement leading-edge compensation solutions with expert guidance and analyzing pay for over 10 million employees across the world.

Join us in our mission to help companies make smarter pay decisions they can trust!

## About the role

Syndio is the platform more than half the Fortune 100 trust to govern pay decisions, built on a decade of pay equity work and millions of real pay records. Executive Engagement & Insights is the team that turns that data into research, executive narrative, and category leadership: making pay a strategic decision rather than a compliance afterthought.

We are hiring a Senior Research Scientist to lead studies from question to published finding. You will combine Syndio's proprietary pay-decision data with external labor-market data, produce findings that executives quote, product teams build, and account teams bring to customers, and sit with CHROs and CFOs to work out what the evidence means for the decisions in front of them.

The role is deliberately broad. We want the person who can design a study on Monday, write the analysis code on Tuesday, and present the finding to a chief people officer on Thursday. Range matters more than depth in any one.

## Why this job is exciting

- Lead studies end to end. Frame the question, design the measurement, run the analysis, and write the finding. Our flagship research reports and partner studies are yours to shape.
- Combine data sets. Join Syndio's pay-decision data with external labor-market, survey, and benchmark data to answer questions no single source can. Build the reusable methods that make the second study faster than the first.
- Put a number on it. Build the outcome and ROI models that connect pay governance to attrition, cost, risk, and performance, and hold them to a standard a CFO's finance team will accept.
- Work directly with customers. Join executive conversations at strategic accounts, translate findings for CHROs and CFOs, and bring back the questions that shape the next study.
- Carry findings into the product. Partner with product and data science so the research shows up in what customers use: features, benchmarks, and reporting.
- Write to advance the field. Co-author reports, articles, and executive briefings, with every external claim traceable to a source. Or work is designed to advance the science and its application.

## About you

- A PhD or equivalent depth in industrial-organizational psychology, behavioral or decision science, labor economics, statistics, or a related field.
- A track record of following applied research through to impact, whether that changed a product, a decision, or a business outcome, not only a publication record.
- Hands-on quantitative skills: causal and quasi-experimental methods, psychometrics and survey design, and working fluency in Python or R and SQL on large, messy, real-world data.
- Comfort in front of senior customers. You can present a finding to a CHRO or CFO, take hard questions, and hold the line on what the evidence does and does not say.
- Range. You are as at home in a data warehouse as in a boardroom, and you prefer carrying work end to end over owning one slice of it.
- Judgment about data. You work inside strict data-use and privacy boundaries without being asked twice.

## Nice to have

- Domain depth in compensation, total rewards, pay equity, or people analytics.
- Experience with labor-market or compensation benchmark data: posted-pay data, salary surveys, or workforce data sets.
- Consulting or customer-facing analytics experience.
- Published thought leadership or a public research voice.
- Experience in a startup, an applied research lab, or a research-to-product environment.

## Why you'll love it here

- 💰 Competitive Compensation. For this role our salary is targeted at $164,000 -$184,000 per year. Final offer amounts are determined by factors such as experience and expertise. We take a geo neutral approach to compensation within the US, meaning that we pay based on job function and level, not location.
- 🏆  Syndio Equity. So you can share in Syndio’s success.
- 🏝  Flexible Vacation Policy. We encourage our team to recharge when they need to, plus paid sick & safe time, compassion leave, and voting leave.
- Paid parental leave
- 🩺  Medical, Dental, Vision. Syndio pays 90% of employee premiums, and 50% for dependents.
- 🏥  Life Insurance & Disability. Syndio covers the full premium.
- 🏦 401(k). To help you save for your future
- Fully remote model - #LI-Remote

The interview overview

Below you'll find an outline of the interview plan for our Research Scientist position. Please note that this is what we expect the process to look like; we may ask you for supplemental information or require an additional step before making a final decision.

- 30 min interview with a member of our Talent Team
- 45 minute zoom interview with the Hiring Manager
- Three video interviews with several team members - 2.5 hours
- Final interviews with executive - 30 minutes

At Syndio, we're building a diverse team that values candor, curiosity, and community. If you share these values and are interested in joining us, we'd love to talk with you even if you don't 100% meet the "about you" listed here. We don't expect anyone to have all the answers, as long as you're willing to learn and grow with us.

Syndio is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are building an inclusive and collaborative workplace as we grow, and we welcome team members regardless of gender/identity, sexual orientation, race or cultural background, religion, physical disability and age.

## About Syndio

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Syndio provides an AI-powered governance platform that helps global enterprises make every compensation decision compliant, consistent, and defensible in real time.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series C, raised $83M total)
- **Headquarters**: Seattle, Washington, USA
- **Founded**: 2016
- **Founders**: Zev Eigen (data scientist and law professor)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: HR Technology / Compensation & Pay Equity Software
- **Target customers**: B2B, primarily large global enterprises (350+ customers including more than half the Fortune 100, such as Walmart, Microsoft, and Salesforce)
- **Mission**: To help companies make smarter pay decisions they can trust.

## Products & Services
- **Syndio Platform (Decision Intelligence for Pay)**: A SaaS platform that governs every compensation decision—hires, promotions, merit cycles—with real-time guidance, compliance checks, and analytics. It is powered by Syndi™, a proprietary AI built for high-stakes compensation work.
- **Essentials**: A foundational tier for setting up pay governance.
- **Predict**: A forward-looking module for modeling the impact of compensation decisions.
- **Global Pay Reports**: Automated pay gap reporting across 100+ countries, including compliance with the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
- **Syndi™ AI**: An AI-native technology that embeds governance into the tools teams already use.
- **Embrace.ai (Acquired 2026)**: An agentic AI startup whose technology and team (co-founders Derek Butts and Seth Halpern) are accelerating Syndio's agentic AI roadmap.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed.
- **Total Funding**: $83 million (including a $50 million Series C in 2021).
- **Key Metric**: Syndio governs over **$1 trillion in pay decisions** for **350+ global enterprises**, covering **10M+ employee pay records**.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly named in available sources, but the company is backed by venture capital.
- **Growth Signals**:
    - Made its first acquisition in 2026 (Embrace.ai) to accelerate agentic AI capabilities.
    - Expanded global footprint to 100+ countries.
    - Launched solutions for the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
    - Ranked No. 48 on the GeekWire 200 index of top Pacific Northwest startups.
    - Reports that its platform can produce $31M to $62M in value per year for a company with 60,000 employees.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Category Creator & Pioneer**: Syndio built the pay equity category and has nearly a decade of experience, earning the trust of the world's most scrutinized global enterprises.
- **Enterprise-Grade Trust & Security**: SOC-2 compliant, trusted inside attorney-client privilege, and its analysis has held up in boardrooms and litigation.
- **Proprietary AI (Syndi™)**: Purpose-built for high-stakes compensation work, continuously tested to reduce bias, and embedded where decisions happen.
- **Domain Expertise**: Deep expertise in compensation, pay equity, and global compliance regulations, with a leadership team experienced at companies like Workday, Amazon, Starbucks, and Smartsheet.
- **Customer Base**: Over half of the Fortune 100 are customers, providing a strong network effect and credibility.

## Strategic Focus
- **Pioneering Decision Intelligence for Pay**: Moving beyond pay equity reporting to become the real-time governance layer for every compensation decision.
- **Agentic AI**: Using the acquisition of Embrace.ai to build the next generation of AI-powered pay intelligence with a focus on governance, explainability, and automation.
- **Global Compliance**: Continuing to expand capabilities to meet evolving regulations, such as the EU Pay Transparency Directive.
- **Product Innovation**: Embedding AI-native tools into the workflows of HR, legal, and compensation teams.

## Why Work Here
- **Impact-Driven Mission**: Employees work on a product that helps the world's most influential companies make fairer, more transparent pay decisions—work with real social impact.
- **Remote-First Culture**: The company is remote-first with in-person meetups, offering flexibility.
- **Competitive Benefits**:
    - Flexible vacation policy (U.S.) + paid holidays.
    - Top-tier healthcare (90% employee / 50% dependent coverage).
    - Stock options + 401(k) option (U.S.).
    - Home office + electronics stipends.
    - Life and disability insurance.
    - Paid parental leave.
- **Transparency & DEI&B**: The company "lives what it delivers" by publishing its own salary ranges, CEO pay ratio, and median pay gap. DEI&B is built into structured interview processes and diverse hiring panels.
- **Strong Engineering Culture**: A team of "curious builders and bold problem-solvers" building AI-native products with enterprise-grade standards. The company emphasizes responsible growth and ethical AI.
- **Leadership**: Led by CEO Maria Colacurcio, a former co-founder of Smartsheet (which went public in 2018), and a leadership team with deep experience at world-class companies.

## Sources
1. [synd.io](https://synd.io/)
2. [synd.io/careers](https://synd.io/careers/)
3. [synd.io/about-us](https://synd.io/about-us/)
4. [linkedin.com/company/syndioinc](https://www.linkedin.com/company/syndioinc)
5. [geekwire.com](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/syndio-bets-on-agentic-ai-with-first-acquisition-in-seattle-pay-equity-startups-history/)

## Other roles at Syndio

- [Senior Domain Expert, Total Rewards](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-domain-expert-total-rewards-syndio-united-states-xjhx8ev0q5kh) — United States
- [Staff Software Engineer, Essentials (Calgary)](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-essentials-calgary-syndio-calgary-dvbgcbcppmfn) — Calgary, Canada
- [Staff Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-syndio-calgary-0j3p3e5hst68) — Calgary, Canada
- [Senior Domain Expert, Total Rewards](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-domain-expert-total-rewards-syndio-united-states-a9xgjsdzfq7m) — United States
- [Staff Data Scientist, Data Products](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-data-scientist-data-products-syndio-united-states-m0seew26cndc) — United States
- [Software Engineer, Integrations (Calgary)](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-integrations-calgary-syndio-calgary-qr7xxmat2wm0) — Calgary, Canada
- [Senior Domain Expert, Labor Economist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-domain-expert-labor-economist-syndio-united-states-q85h5vfb21tg) — United States
- [Staff Software Engineer, Backend (US  - Remote or Calgary)](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-backend-us-remote-or-calgary-syndio-united-states-b3ajer4p8x17) — United States
- [Marketing Operations & Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/marketing-operations-program-manager-syndio-united-states-8epnkww84ey7) — United States
- [Revenue Systems & Operations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/revenue-systems-operations-manager-syndio-united-states-qmms83hy1xk3) — United States