Work With Us

About Kayvea

Kayvea LLC is a women-led data consulting firm based in Durham, NC. We sit at the intersection of complex research data infrastructure and the people who need to use it — researchers, coordinators, clinicians, and decision-makers at academic medical centers, public health agencies, and NIH-funded programs. Our value is translation: we make existing infrastructure legible, useful, and actually adopted.

We are a small, intentional team. Everyone here does substantive work. We build things that last.

The Role

The Principal Consultant will be Kayvea's operational and delivery anchor — the person who makes sure engagements run well, clients feel held, and internal work doesn't fall through the cracks. This role is dual-facing: you'll manage active client projects end-to-end while also owning key internal coordination and process infrastructure.

You are not a project coordinator or a ticket manager. You are a technically-grounded consultant who can run a multi-site research data project, communicate clearly with a PI and a data engineer in the same meeting, and know when something is off before anyone says it.

What You'll Do

Client Engagement & Project Management

• Own the full lifecycle of assigned client engagements — from kickoff through delivery and close-out — including timelines, deliverables, scope management, and stakeholder communication.
• Serve as the primary day-to-day point of contact for clients, maintaining trust through clear, consistent communication.
• Facilitate working sessions with research teams, coordinators, and technical staff; translate between clinical, operational, and data perspectives.
• Proactively identify risks, flag scope creep, and bring proposed solutions rather than problems.
• Produce and maintain project documentation: status reports, meeting notes, decision logs, and handoff materials.

Internal Coordination & Operations

• Own and maintain Kayvea's internal project tracking and delivery infrastructure — templates, workflows, and standards the team actually uses.
• Support business development activity: coordinate proposal drafts, track pipeline status, and manage follow-up cadences.
• Work closely with the Founder & CEO on capacity planning, engagement prioritization, and firm-level operational decisions.
• Contribute to documentation, process development, and quality review across active engagements.
• Help onboard and orient subcontractors and partner consultants to Kayvea's standards and client context.
• Actively use Kayvea-provided AI tools (including Claude) to streamline workflows, accelerate documentation, and improve delivery quality — and help identify new opportunities to apply them responsibly across engagements.

What We're Looking For

Required

• 5+ years of experience managing complex projects in research, healthcare, or data-intensive environments.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple concurrent engagements, each with different stakeholders and timelines.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — able to write a clear status memo, run a productive meeting, and ask the right clarifying question.
• Comfort working across technical and non-technical stakeholders; you don't need to code, but you need to understand what the data team is talking about.
• Self-directed and organized — you manage your own workload, surface blockers early, and don't need to be chased.
• Experience with or genuine interest in NIH-funded research programs, academic medical centers, or public health data systems.

Strongly Preferred

• Familiarity with REDCap (data collection, instrument design, study workflows) and/or OMOP Common Data Model.
• Experience working in or alongside multi-site clinical or public health research studies.
• Background in public health, biomedical informatics, clinical research coordination, or a closely related field.
• Experience working in a consulting or services environment with multiple clients.
• Willingness and enthusiasm to work with AI tools as a core part of how you work — Kayvea uses AI intentionally and ethically, and this role is expected to model that.

Compensation & Benefits

Why Kayvea

• We do work that matters in research and public health infrastructure — and we do it without burning people out.
• The 4-day work week is real and protected, not an aspiration.
• You will have real ownership. This is not a role where you manage someone else's decisions.
• You will grow. As Kayvea grows, this role grows with it.
• We are a WOSB-certified, women-led firm. We hire people who care about doing good work in good environments.

How to Apply

Send a resume and a short note — not a formal cover letter, just tell us why this role fits — to kate@kayvea.com. We review applications on a rolling basis. No recruiters, please.