Director, Applied Research (6-month contract)

Job title

Director, Applied Research (6-month contract)

Department

Service Programs

Reports to

Vice President, Equity, Programs & Innovation Implementation

Salary range

$105,000 - $125,000

Job type

Full-Time, 6-month contract, Hybrid working 2-3 days per week

Location

Toronto, Ontario

Posting period

Friday, August 7, 2026

The opportunity

Are you motivated by the chance to help ensure all young people in Canada can access mental health support and Feel Out Loud? Kids Help Phone (KHP) is Canada’s Unlock The Hope Youth Charity. We’re the first and Canada's only national 24/7, free, confidential, and multilingual e-mental health service for youth and a global leader in innovation for youth and their well-being.

Reporting to the VP, Equity, Programs & Innovation Implementation, the Director, Applied Research is responsible for advancing KHP’s applied research strategy and strengthening the systems, partnerships, and organizational capacity required to support the best possible interaction for young people. The role will support the growth, evaluation, outcome measurement, and sustainability of applied research activities across KHP, with a focus on building research infrastructure, mobilizing knowledge, and enabling program and service leaders to use evidence in decision-making.

The Director will be a core member of KHP’s applied research function and will work closely with clinical, program, technology, data, equity, privacy, legal stakeholders and external partners. The role requires deep applied research expertise, strong partnership management, and the ability to design practical evidence, evaluation, and governance approaches that support youth mental health services today. This includes strengthening data and ethics practices, supporting evaluation and outcome measurement, and building staff research literacy across the organization. It’ll take courage, collaboration, innovation, resilience and trust. If you’re interested in transforming e-mental health solutions with KHP, you can explore this opportunity today!

The responsibilities

Applied Research Strategy, Infrastructure & Governance

• Lead the continued development and implementation of KHP’s applied research infrastructure, including research governance processes, decision-making pathways, and tools that support consistent, ethical, and high-quality research activity.
• Strengthen research ethics, REB readiness, privacy, data management, and data use agreement practices in collaboration with KHP privacy, legal, clinical, technology, and data teams.
• Support implementation of KHP’s Thought Leadership Strategy, including submitting conference abstracts when relevant and representing KHP at key events
• Liaise with KHP IT and data teams as needed to set up technical environments to support partnerships and projects

Service Evaluation & Outcome Measurement

• Work collaboratively with clinical, program and data teams to design practical measurement and evaluation frameworks, indicators, and research questions aligned to organizational priorities and youth outcomes.
• Leverage KHP datasets and mixed-methods evidence to generate actionable insights that improve the effectiveness, equity, accessibility, and impact of KHP’s services and programs.
• Translate evaluation findings into recommendations for practice, reporting, continuous improvement, and strategic decision-making.

Knowledge Mobilization & Capacity Building

• Lead KHP's knowledge mobilization strategy, including evidence synthesis, environmental scanning, sector benchmarking, publications, presentations, and translation of findings into actionable insights for internal and external audiences.
• Build staff research literacy through resources, learning opportunities, coaching, and accessible tools that support teams to understand, use, and contribute to applied research.
• Support clinical resource review and curation by ensuring relevant evidence and practice insights are available to inform program and service development.

Research Partnerships & Portfolio Management

• Lead the development and management of strategic research partnerships across academic, community, healthcare, technology, and philanthropic sectors, ensuring alignment with KHP's mission, equity commitments, and strategic priorities.
• Serve as the primary relationship lead for research partners, overseeing governance, deliverables, issue resolution, and shared accountability across projects.
• Lead strategic applied research initiatives related to artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, coordinating external partners.
• Support research funding activities, including grant development and funder reporting, in collaboration with internal leaders and external partners.

Organizational Leadership

• Supervise a Research Coordinator who will report directly to this role, ensuring they have a clear roadmap of activities and goals.
• Lead in alignment with KHP’s values and IDEA strategies, embedding equity, accessibility, youth engagement, and cultural safety into research design, implementation, evaluation, and knowledge mobilization.
• Oversee scholar, fellowship, students where appropriate, ensuring supervision, integration, and capacity building are well supported.
• Manage portfolio and project budget, KPIs, risks, and reporting for executive leadership, the Board, funders, and external partners.

The qualifications

• PhD or equivalent doctoral-level training in a relevant discipline is required.
• 5-8+ years’ experience leading applied research, program evaluation, research governance, knowledge mobilization, or related evidence-to-practice work; youth mental health, digital mental health, or community health experience is an asset.
• Demonstrated experience building research infrastructure, including ethics and REB processes, data management practices, privacy and data use agreements, and data or project governance.
• Proven ability to manage complex research partnerships with academic, community, health system, technology, and/or philanthropic partners.
• Strong experience designing evaluation frameworks, outcome measurement approaches, evidence syntheses, environmental scans, and funder or accountability reporting.
• Ability to build organizational capacity and staff research literacy by translating complex research, data, and evaluation concepts into practical tools, guidance, and decisions.
• Strong leadership, communication, facilitation, and presentation skills, with the ability to influence across functions and simplify complex concepts for diverse audiences.
• Experience managing budgets, KPIs, risks, external deliverables, and cross-functional implementation across multiple stakeholders.
• Commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, cultural safety, and meaningful youth engagement in research and evaluation.
• Bilingualism in English and French is a strong asset.

Don’t meet every qualification listed? Studies often report equity-deserving people are less likely to apply for jobs unless they meet every requirement. KHP is dedicated to building a more diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role, but your experience doesn’t align with every qualification, we welcome you to apply anyway. You may have the qualifications / experience for this role or other opportunities at KHP!

About KHP, Canada’s Unlock The Hope Youth Charity

Kids Help Phone (KHP) is Canada’s only free, national, 24/7, multilingual and confidential e-mental health service for youth to get help and Feel Out Loud. Since 1989, KHP has been the empowering, trusted changemaker giving young people’s feelings, big and small, a non-judgmental place to go through personalized well-being solutions. A made-in-Canada, global leader, KHP continually evolves by blending data, innovation and technology with real human support and clinical knowledge to unlock the hope young people need to thrive in their world. Explore help for all the feelings atKidsHelpPhone.ca [http://kidshelpphone.ca].

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA)

KHP has a role to play in effecting social change and advancing equity. This is why the practice of IDEA is critical to us. KHP has a long history of celebrating and advancing IDEA through our tailored programs, services, policies, initiatives and task forces with contributions and leadership from teams across the organization. We will not waver on these commitments and will continue leading the way in making the workplace, and the world young people live in, more inclusive, diverse, equitable and accessible.

We believe it’s critical that our services empower everyone who interacts with us to bring their authentic selves to an environment of mutual respect. An open and diverse community can foster the inclusion and amplification of voices that have been, and continue to be, underrepresented.

As such, we welcome applicants from equity-deserving communities (e.g. Indigenous Peoples, racialized persons, persons with disabilities, women, 2SLGBTQ+ individuals, etc.). We strongly believe that alleviating the underrepresentation of equity-deserving groups will help create a stronger KHP and help us better support the needs of youth from coast to coast to coast.

To learn more about how we are committed to advancing IDEA, you can exploreKHP’s IDEA 2023–2027 Strategy and Action Plan [https://kidshelpphone.ca/get-involved/about-us/idea-strategy-action-plan/].

Accommodations

KHP welcomes applications from people living with disabilities. Reasonable accommodations are available upon request during any phase of the application / hiring process. If you’re contacted about an opportunity, you can reply and let us know if you require accommodations at any time.

Compensation and benefits

Salaries at KHP are determined by candidate experience, qualifications and specific skill sets, as well as market and operational considerations. Potential additional benefits at KHP include:

• Hybrid work model
• Comprehensive Employee Benefits Program
• Emergency Travel Assistance
• CAAT Pension Plan
• Wellness programs
• Recognition awards
• Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP)

Candidate verification

The successful candidate for this opportunity will be asked to complete a background screen, which may include criminal, credit, employment and educational checks. All offers of employment are conditional on the receipt of satisfactory results of any applicable check.

Privacy

KHP cares about your privacy! We’re required to save select information about opportunities, applications and interviews for set periods of time. To learn more, you can explore KHP’s Privacy Policy [https://kidshelpphone.ca/privacy-policy/] or contact us using our general form [https://kidshelpphone.ca/get-involved/contact-us/].

Message to agencies

KHP doesn’t accept unsolicited phone calls, referrals and / or resumes from any source other than directly from candidates. KHP won’t consider unsolicited phone calls, referrals and / or resumes from vendors including and without limitation, search firms, staffing agencies, fee-based referral services and recruiting agencies. The submission of unsolicited referrals and / or resumes by anyone other than a candidate directly to KHP is deemed gratuitous. KHP won’t be obligated or bound in any way to pay a referral or any other fee if a person referred to us from a source other than a direct candidate is subsequently hired.

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