Research Associate - AI Evaluations

Overview

Research Associate supporting Karya's AI evaluation team to design and run community-facing research that shapes how AI systems are evaluated, working end to end from research design to evaluation frameworks and datasets.

What you'll do

• Contribute to research design, including research questions, methods, site selection and sampling, working closely with project leads
• Build and adapt research toolkits: discussion guides, oral consent scripts in local languages, training materials and feedback tools
• Plan and conduct focus group discussions, interviews and pilots with communities, including participant recruitment and field logistics
• Coordinate with field teams during data collection, keeping research consent-first and respectful of participants' time and context
• Clean, cull and analyse qualitative and quantitative data through a gender and intersectional lens
• Synthesise insights into findings that strengthen evaluation frameworks, datasets and toolkits
• Contribute to desk research, reports and external outputs
• Support project management by tracking timelines, deliverables and decisions across internal teams (Ops, Tech) and external partners

What you'll need

• At least 2–3 years of research experience, ideally at a tech, impact or AI-focused organisation
• A degree in a social science discipline (e.g., sociology, development studies, gender studies, anthropology), or equivalent experience
• Grounding in gender and intersectionality (caste, class, region) through study, research or practice
• Experience contributing to research design and delivering research projects
• Hands-on qualitative and field research experience, including running FGDs
• Working data skills: SQL, quantitative analysis, and some coding (e.g., Python or R)
• Fluency in spoken and written Hindi
• Willingness to travel for fieldwork
• Applied AI/ML literacy: enough to engage meaningfully with model evaluation, human-in-the-loop systems and language technologies
• Socio-technical systems thinking, meaning you understand technology and society as shaping each other rather than as separate concerns
• Strong written and verbal communication in Hindi and English
• Comfort working in ambiguous, early-stage research settings

Nice to have

• Proficiency in Indian languages beyond Hindi
• Familiarity with agriculture or rural livelihoods
• Exposure to participatory methods

Details

• Location: Bengaluru
• Flexible work options