Senior Researcher - Anime Intelligence

About the role

You are a curious, resourceful, and execution-focused Senior Researcher who will scale Crunchyroll's understanding of fan feedback and title performance across our global slate.

You will build intelligence for someone who's passionate about anime and internet culture. You are someone who thrives in ambiguity, and knows how to turn social chatter into structured, repeatable insight. You will own high-volume reporting workstreams and collaborate with colleagues and partners across Research and Insights, Data Science & Machine Learning, VOD Analytics, Content Strategy, and Marketing to ensure insights land where and when they're needed.

You will work across title-level seasonal overviews and cross-cutting insight projects (slate and genre trends, community signals, demand tracking). You will help build, maintain, and improve the tools, templates, and AI-powered workflows that allow us to integrate multiple data sources and deliver fast, accurate, and culturally grounded intelligence across 50+ titles per season.

You are a hands-on, high-impact teammate who cares deeply about getting the details right, building things that scale, and collaborating well across teams. And importantly, this is a dream role for someone passionate about anime and keen to bring the voice of the fans to the forefront.

Reporting to the Senior Director, Research and Insights (with dotted lines to the Brand & Content Insights Manager and Market Intelligence Director), you will:

• Own and deliver scalable, high-velocity reporting workstreams that decode and formalize fandom signals across social media, forums, and anime communities
• Collaborate with Brand & Content Insights Manager to build and maintain systems of data intelligence for quarterly overviews, diagnostics, premiere snapshots, 6-week deep dives, and season/cour wrap-ups across 50+ titles per season
• Contribute to quarterly-level overview reports that capture broad fan reception trends and standout moments across the season
• Partner with the Brand & Content Insights Manager, Data Scientists, and Content Analytics team to validate findings, methodologies, ensure data quality, evolve frameworks, and set up normative performance scores and databases
• Use resources like Canvs.ai, Talkwalker, Brandwatch, Audiense, Glean, Databricks, and others to build semi-automated pipelines and scalable intelligence systems
• Help develop and iterate analysis templates, custom GPTs, AI agents, and dashboards to make insights easy to use, easy to repeat, and easy to share
• Collaborate deeply across research & insights, marketing, content strategy, and content analytics to make sure the outputs are actionable and aligned with current best practices
• Stay tuned into anime fan culture – not just what's trending, but why it matters

We are considering applicants based in Los Angeles, CA.

About You

• You have 5+ years of experience in social intelligence, content insights, or audience strategy
• You have some experience in streaming, entertainment, or gaming
• You are fluent in anime culture and social analytics
• You have working experience building GPT-style workflows, AI agents, or insight bots using LLM platforms (directly or in partnership with data scientists)
• You understand fandom dynamics and can decode both loud and subtle signals across social ecosystems
• You know how to turn qualitative chaos into synthesized takeaways
• You are collaborative, curious, and thrive in a dynamic, cross-functional team environment
• You are familiar with visual data storytelling and love communicating insights with style, agility and precision, using dashboards and streamable decks that influence senior stakeholders
• You have experience with ambiguity, move quickly without thoughtfulness, and enjoy building systems that outpace the speed of culture
• You bring a passion for semiotics, discourse analysis, data analytics, and an interest in exploring fan behaviors
• You love diving into r/anime and MAL comments in your spare time

About the Team

Crunchyroll's Research & Insights team helps drive the growth of our streaming service and brand globally by delivering impactful insights across the anime consumer, content, brand, and market intelligence.

As a member of CDI (Center for Data & Insights), you are joining a growing, diverse, and dynamic team of researchers, business analysts, data engineers and scientists that answer some of our most consequential and sophisticated business questions. This involves collaborating with internal and external partners and leading the delivery of objective and engaging insights to improve our business's understanding and ability to act.

Why you will love working at Crunchyroll

In addition to getting to work with fun, passionate and inspired colleagues, you will also enjoy the following benefits and perks:

#LifeAtCrunchyroll #LI-Hybrid