Group Director, Research and Analytics

About the Role

Sullivan is seeking a Group Director, Research + Analytics to own and advance how we measure, report, and optimize brands, experiences and campaigns across our client portfolio all with an eye towards enhancing business outcomes. This is a senior leadership role that sits at the intersection of creative, strategy, and technology — bringing analytical rigor and results to everything we do.

The ideal candidate is both a strategic thinker and a hands-on practitioner — someone who can architect a measurement framework in the morning and pressure-test a GTM implementation in the afternoon. You'll bring a commanding point of view on analytics, a track record of building scalable approaches across diverse clients and marketing objectives, and the credibility to influence at the executive level.

This is a rare opportunity to shape Sullivan's analytics foundation — defining the tools, frameworks, and culture that will drive how data informs creativity, performance, and storytelling for clients across financial services, higher education, and technology. You'll also partner with Sullivan's growth team to apply that same rigor to our own marketing program.

Key Responsibilities

Measurement & Strategy

• Define and lead Sullivan's overall measurement philosophy — establishing frameworks, KPIs, and reporting methodologies that scale across brands, websites, campaigns, and other? digital experiences.

• Translate complex business objectives into sharp analytics strategies, identifying the right data, metrics, and visualization approach for each engagement.

• Help quantify savings and value for clients in implementing our ideas..

• Serve as a senior thought leader across creative, strategy, and digital teams — ensuring analytics is embedded in how we think, not just how we report.

• Lead the development of qualitative and quantitative research plans in partnership with strategy; oversee execution directly or through third-party partners.

• Codify Sullivan's measurement approach through scalable templates, best practices, and repeatable frameworks that elevate the agency's analytics maturity.

Client Leadership & Insights

• Serve as the senior analytics voice in client relationships — leading measurement conversations, presenting performance narratives, and identifying opportunities to deepen analytical sophistication.

• Bridge technical depth and strategic clarity in every client interaction, earning trust as both an expert and a partner.

• Proactively surface opportunities to integrate data and measurement into new and existing engagements.

• Operational & Agency Excellence

• Drive Sullivan's internal analytics standards — improving QA practices, documentation, and process across the team.

• Play a key role in new business efforts, advising on measurement strategy and shaping analytics deliverables for pitches.

• Contribute to building the agency's broader analytics culture, mentoring colleagues and modeling what data-driven thinking looks like in practice.

Dashboarding, Reporting & Data Architecture

• Build and evolve client-facing dashboards in Looker Studio and Tableau — with a strong emphasis on visual clarity, narrative structure, and business relevance.

• Maintain a deep understanding of how data flows across the analytics stack (GTM → GA4 → Looker Studio/Tableau → database), including integrations with SQL databases.

• Deliver reporting that doesn't just surface numbers — but connects performance to outcomes and tells a story that drives decisions.

• Tagging & Implementation

• Architect and maintain website tracking through Google Tag Manager — including custom events, triggers, and variables for form submissions, scroll depth, video engagement, and other key interactions.

• Partner with developers to design robust data layers and ensure accurate, consistent event tracking across all environments.
• Own QA and validation of all tagging implementations, maintaining documentation and changelogs that uphold data integrity across clients.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in digital, web, or marketing analytics; agency experience strongly preferred.

• Experience leading strategic research and analtyics design and implementation.

• Advanced proficiency with GA4, Google Tag Manager, Looker Studio, and Tableau.

• Deep hands-on experience implementing custom event tracking, data layer design, and tagging across complex web environments.

• Working knowledge of PostgreSQL or other relational databases.

• Proven ability to translate business questions into insight-driven analytics plans — and to present those insights compellingly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Bonus: familiarity with SEO/AEO analytics, A/B testing, or workflow automation tools such as n8n or Alteryx.