Community Research Specialist
About Us
Fandom is home to the world’s largest collection of fan communities, where millions of users come together to celebrate their favorite entertainment and gaming franchises. Our platform is built on collaboration, passion, and deep fan engagement, empowering users to contribute, connect, and shape the stories they love.
Fandom’s Community team plays a crucial role in shaping the fan experience across our vast network of wikis and entertainment hubs. As the home for millions of passionate users, we are focused on fostering deeper engagement, broadening our reach, and creating dynamic, interactive spaces that cater to evolving fan behaviors. Our goal is to ensure that communities not only remain a trusted source of knowledge but also provide meaningful and rewarding experiences for contributors and fans alike.
About this Role
We are seeking a Community Research Specialist to join our team. This role is dedicated to bridging the gap between community sentiment and product development. You will be the primary person responsible for formalizing how we analyze user feedback, investigate community needs, and translate those insights into actionable recommendations for our teams.
This role informs decision-making through structured community research and insights, but does not directly own product prioritization, roadmap decisions, or frontline community support operations. Your work will directly support our 2026 North Star goals, specifically in creating a formal feedback framework and identifying growth opportunities across our 250,000+ wikis. You’ll partner directly with Product, Community Operations, Data Science and Analytics to shape the community strategy through robust, repeatable research.
You should have a "data-first" mindset, a passion for fan culture, and the ability to turn qualitative conversations into quantitative trends.
You Will…
Research & User Insights
- Conduct qualitative and quantitative research to identify user behaviors, motivations, and unmet needs.
- Organize and facilitate community discussions, focus groups, and roundtables to gather deep feedback on specific product themes or platform updates.
- Design, deploy, and analyze targeted user surveys to validate hypotheses and measure sentiment on specific initiatives.
- Analyze recurring themes in community discussions to categorize "voice of the customer" trends.
- Map end-to-end user journeys to identify friction points and opportunities for better platform engagement and support.
Data Analysis & Support Optimization
- Manage the Community Zendesk feedback queue, ensuring that user ideas, concerns, and feedback are acknowledged, categorized and synthesized.
- Help segment our user base (from core contributors to casual visitors) to provide tailored insights for different platform experiences.
- Collaborate with the Community Managers and others to identify "high-potential" communities for growth and retention.
Product Collaboration & Tooling
- Act as the bridge for insight visibility; ensure feedback and feature requests are clearly captured and communicated through Zendesk and JIRA.
- Work closely with Product and Community teams to provide data-backed solutions for detected community pain points.
- Contribute to the creation of a unified community database that tracks previous decisions, tools, power users, and user feedback.
- Suggest and help implement AI-powered or automated tools to streamline community reporting and sentiment tracking.
What Success Looks Like
- Actionable Data: Product and Community teams receive regular, clear reports that influence the roadmap and strategy.
- Streamlined Feedback Loop: A functional workflow between community and our internal tools that ensures community ideas are prioritized and tracked within the product development cycle.
- Formalized Frameworks: Successful establishment of a feedback framework that delivers consistent data for innovation.
- Deep Empathy: Internal stakeholders have a clearer, segmented understanding of our "silent 90+%" and core contributor needs.
You Have...
- 3+ years of experience understanding fan bases and online communities, with a proven ability to build research around user-generated content to inform community strategy and operations.
- Proven ability to design and analyze surveys and lead qualitative research discussions or focus groups with community members and power users.
- Strong understanding of online community dynamics, social platforms, and the nuances of fandom culture.
- Excellent written communication skills, with the ability to "tell a story" through data for non-technical audiences.
- Hands-on experience managing feedback loops, prioritizing requests, and coordinating with teams to influence direction.
- Ability to work independently, managing multiple research threads with high flexibility.
- Experience with data visualization and analytical tools.
- Experience with SQL or basic data querying.
- Genuine passion for Fandom, gaming, or pop culture.
Bonus Points…
- Familiarity with MediaWiki or large-scale wiki ecosystems.
- Experience using AI tools for sentiment analysis or data categorization.
Benefits & Perks
- Laptop and all the gear you need for work
- Free access to a multitude of popular online courses and books sponsored by our company
- Training (unlimited Udemy + more)
- Company stock options
- Company swag packages
- Private Medical and Dental Insurance
- Life insurance, critical illness insurance and income protection insurance
- Company pension 5% ER, 5% EE
- VTO (Voluntary Time Off) - a day off every quarter for volunteering non-profit
- Frequent team bonding events
- Flexible work hours & time-off
- Employee Interest and Hobby Groups supported by our company
- Open, energetic and fan-focused, international work environment
About Fandom
Fandom is the world’s largest fan platform where fans immerse themselves in imagined worlds across entertainment and gaming. Reaching more than 350 million unique visitors per month and hosting more than 250,000 wikis, Fandom is the #1 source for in-depth information on pop culture, gaming, TV and film, where fans learn about and celebrate their favorite fandoms. Fandom’s Gaming division manages the online video game retailer Fanatical. Fandom Productions, the content arm of Fandom, enhances the fan experience through curated editorial coverage and branded content from trusted and established publishing brands Gamespot, TV Guide and Metacritic, along with its Emmy-nominated Honest Trailers and the weekly video news program The Loop. For more information follow @getfandom or visit: www.fandom.com.
Fandom is proud to be an equal opportunities employer. Employees and contractors, as well as prospective employees and contractors, will all be treated equally and fairly. Fandom is committed to ensuring no less favourable treatment is experienced by any current or prospective employee because of any of the protected characteristics under the UK Equality Act 2010 or equivalent local equality legislation. To review Fandom UKs privacy notice,click here