Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Web Research Consultant

🎯 Role Definition

The Web Research Consultant is a subject-matter expert responsible for sourcing, validating, synthesizing, and communicating high-value online intelligence to inform commercial, strategic, and operational decisions. This role blends advanced internet research techniques (including OSINT and Boolean search), web scraping and data-mining tools, and narrative reporting to deliver actionable insights for sales, product, corporate strategy, and due-diligence teams. The ideal candidate is methodical, curious, skilled with both manual and automated research tooling, and experienced at translating raw data into clear, prioritized recommendations.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Internet Research Analyst / Online Researcher
Market Research Assistant / Junior Analyst
Sales Intelligence or Lead Generation Specialist

Advancement To:

Senior Web Research Consultant / Lead Researcher
Market Intelligence Manager / Competitive Intelligence Lead
Strategic Insights Consultant / Director of Research

Lateral Moves:

Research Operations / Research Automation Specialist
Data Analyst / Business Intelligence Analyst

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Conduct comprehensive internet research using advanced Boolean search, targeted site searches, and OSINT techniques to identify company profiles, decision-makers, funding history, corporate structures, and regulatory filings to support sales outreach and M&A due diligence.
Design and execute customized research plans for each engagement, including scoping objectives, identifying primary and secondary sources, and defining deliverables and timelines that align with stakeholder goals.
Extract structured data from websites, public records, news sources, social media, and proprietary databases using manual methods and automated tools (web scraping frameworks, browser extensions, APIs), then transform and load results into client-facing deliverables.
Validate and triangulate findings across at least three independent sources to ensure data accuracy, flagging inconsistencies and documenting verification steps and source reliability.
Produce in-depth written reports, executive summaries, and slide decks that synthesize research findings into clear conclusions, prioritized recommendations, and proposed next steps for commercial, legal, or strategic teams.
Maintain and update prospect lists, competitor trackers, and market maps in CRM systems (e.g., Salesforce) and intelligence platforms, ensuring contact information, company attributes, and tagging conventions remain current and searchable.
Perform competitive landscape analysis by identifying competitors’ product features, pricing models, go-to-market strategies, customer reviews, and digital footprint to inform product positioning and market entry decisions.
Execute targeted lead generation projects by identifying and qualifying prospects based on firmographic, technographic, and intent-based criteria, and deliver sanitized contact lists ready for outreach.
Run alerting and monitoring processes for named accounts, industries, or technologies (news scrapers, Google Alerts, RSS feeds) and summarize time-sensitive developments for stakeholders in a concise daily/weekly brief.
Support regulatory, compliance, and background checks by locating public records, litigation history, sanctions lists, and ownership information, preparing red-flag reports with source links and evidence provenance.
Collaborate with sales, marketing, product, and legal teams to translate business questions into researchable queries, ensuring findings directly address decision-making needs and are delivered with clear business impact.
Build and maintain reusable research playbooks, search syntax libraries (Boolean queries), source catalogs, and SOPs to increase team efficiency and reduce duplicate effort across projects.
Implement and optimize web-scraping pipelines for recurring data collection tasks, including scheduling, error handling, proxy rotation, and data normalization to maintain high-quality datasets for analysis.
Conduct technical vendor and ecosystem assessments by researching vendor capabilities, integrations, market reviews, case studies, and customer testimonials to support procurement and partner selection.
Map organizational hierarchies and ownership structures for complex entities (subsidiaries, shell companies, holding patterns), using registry filings, LinkedIn, corporate websites, and business registries to produce org charts and relationship diagrams.
Analyze digital marketing footprints (SEO, paid channels, social engagement, content cadence) using tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, SimilarWeb, and Google Analytics to identify competitors’ traffic sources and digital growth signals.
Create bespoke datasets by combining scraped web data with third-party databases, normalizing fields, resolving duplicates, and enriching records with classification tags and confidence scores.
Train and advise internal teams on best practices for online research, source evaluation, data privacy compliance, and efficient use of research tooling to raise organizational research literacy.
Manage multiple concurrent projects with clear prioritization, frequent stakeholder check-ins, and transparent progress reporting that includes timelines, risks, assumptions, and potential follow-up actions.
Prepare and present findings to senior leadership and cross-functional teams, using storytelling techniques and data visualization (charts, heatmaps, timelines) to make complex research accessible and actionable.
Maintain strict confidentiality and handle sensitive information appropriately, ensuring compliance with company policies, client agreements, and applicable data protection regulations.
Continuously scout and evaluate new data sources, search techniques, and automation tools to improve coverage, reduce time-to-insight, and expand the team’s research capabilities.
Provide ad-hoc research support for rapid-response requests (investor inquiries, press mentions, crisis monitoring), delivering concise briefs and prioritized next steps under tight deadlines.
Track and report KPIs for research projects (time-to-delivery, accuracy rate, volume of leads, stakeholder satisfaction) to demonstrate value and guide process improvements.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory analysis to answer immediate business questions and test hypotheses.
Contribute to the organization's data and research strategy by recommending tooling, workflow improvements, and source investments.
Collaborate with business units to translate research needs into engineering or automation requirements, helping to scope scraping projects and data integration tasks.
Participate in planning and agile ceremonies where relevant (sprint planning, sprint reviews) to align research deliverables with development and product roadmaps.
Assist with onboarding new research team members by developing training materials, delivering workshops on Boolean search and OSINT basics, and pairing on live projects.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Expert-level internet research and OSINT methodologies, including advanced Boolean search, targeted site queries, and archival research.
Proficiency in web-scraping tools and libraries (e.g., Python, BeautifulSoup, Scrapy, Selenium) and understanding of scraping ethics and rate limits.
Strong spreadsheet skills (Excel, Google Sheets) with experience in formulas, pivot tables, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, and data-cleaning techniques.
Familiarity with SQL for data extraction, joins, and quick manipulations of larger datasets stored in relational databases.
Experience with CRM systems (Salesforce, HubSpot) for data ingestion, tag management, and list segmentation.
Proficiency with digital intelligence tools (LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, Clearbit), SEO and traffic tools (SEMrush, Ahrefs, SimilarWeb), and media archives.
Ability to produce clear visualizations and dashboards using Power BI, Tableau, or Google Data Studio for stakeholder-friendly reporting.
Strong written reporting skills: ability to craft executive summaries, evidence-backed recommendations, and reproducible methodology appendices.
Knowledge of data privacy and compliance practices, including how to handle PII, opt-outs, and jurisdictional restrictions.
Familiarity with API usage and integration to pull data from third-party services and automate repetitive data collection tasks.
Experience with version control and documentation tools (Confluence, Notion, Git) to maintain reproducibility and knowledge transfer.

Soft Skills

Exceptional attention to detail and a rigor for verification and source provenance.
Strong critical thinking and analytical problem-solving; able to synthesize disparate data into coherent insights.
Excellent written and verbal communication; comfortable presenting findings to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Time management and prioritization in a fast-paced environment with multiple competing deadlines.
Curiosity and intellectual humility—open to iterating on hypotheses and exploring unconventional sources.
Stakeholder empathy and service orientation: translates research into business-relevant recommendations.
Confidentiality and ethical judgment when handling sensitive or restricted information.
Adaptability and continuous learning mindset to keep pace with new tools, sources, and search techniques.
Collaborative team player with experience working in cross-functional, agile environments.
Project management skills to scope, deliver, and close research engagements on time and on budget.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in a relevant field (Business, Information Science, Economics, Political Science, Computer Science, Journalism).

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Market Research, Intelligence Studies, Data Science, or Journalism.
Formal coursework or certification in OSINT, data analytics, or web scraping is a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Information Science / Library Science
Market Research / Business Analytics
Computer Science / Data Science
Journalism / Communications
Political Science / International Relations

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–7 years of professional web research, market intelligence, or related experience.

Preferred: 4+ years of demonstrated experience conducting end-to-end internet research projects, building repeatable research processes, and delivering insights to commercial or strategic leadership. Prior experience in a consultancy, competitive intelligence, or due-diligence environment is strongly preferred.