Ethnographer - Stealth Industrial Innovation Project (Contract) at UP.Labs – Midland, Texas

EthnographerRole Type: Contract / Project-BasedLocation: Remote with weekly travelEngagement: 2-3 months
About UP.Labs & This ProjectUP.Labs is a venture studio that builds and launches vertical AI-enabled B2B SaaS companies across transportation, mobility, industrial, and adjacent sectors. We don't just study problems — we build companies that solve them.
This engagement sits at the heart of a stealth 6-month Innovation Sprint for a major industrial player. We need someone who can go into the field and understand the ecosystem central to this project, from the inside out.
The RoleYou will be the team's eyes and ears on the ground. This is primary research work — not desk research. You'll conduct deep ethnographic interviews and observation across operators, buyers, regulators, and community stakeholders local to the project's location. Your job is to surface the unspoken logic of how this ecosystem actually functions: the trust networks, the informal workarounds, the real reasons deals happen or don't. Your findings will feed directly into Investment Committee gates that narrow the project from broad opportunity exploration to two fundable business plans. The quality of your field work determines the quality of the bets UP.Labs makes.
What You'll Do

• Design and execute a 30–40 interview program spanning operators, industrial users, municipalities, regulators, and financial investors
• Conduct field observation at diverse sites and facilities to understand day-to-day workflows and informal practices that surveys miss
• Facilitate structured ecosystem mapping sessions to build a stakeholder value chain across six domains
• Lead weekly synthesis sessions every Friday to debrief field findings, tag insights by theme (economics, logistics, regulation, trust, contract structure, quality), and update the team's hypothesis scorecard
• Identify tension points where buyer needs and seller constraints fundamentally collide — these are the whitespace opportunities
• Translate raw ethnographic data into structured insight artifacts: journey maps, ecosystem diagrams, insight decks, and opportunity area briefs
• Contribute to IC#1 deliverable: 5–8 validated opportunity areas with supporting qualitative evidence
• Continue targeted validation conversations in Phases 3 and 4 as solution concepts are stress-tested

What We're Looking For

• 3–7 years of applied ethnographic or qualitative research experience — ideally in industrial, energy, agriculture, infrastructure, or hard-tech sectors
• Demonstrated ability to conduct research in industrial field environments, not just boardrooms
• Strong synthesis skills: you know how to move from raw interview data to structured insight without flattening the nuance
• Familiarity with research methods: semi-structured interviews, contextual inquiry, participant observation, stakeholder mapping, insight tagging
• Excellent interpersonal skills — the people you'll interview are operators and engineers who have no patience for jargon or academic framing
• Ability to work inside a fast-moving, time-boxed innovation process with hard IC gate deadlines
• Experience in oil & gas, water management, agriculture, land management, or environmental ecosystems is a meaningful plus, not a requirement

What Success Looks Like

• 30–40 completed interviews with ecosystem stakeholders by end of Month 2
• A synthesis artifact that converts field insights into 5–8 structured opportunity areas with clear evidence trails
• Tension maps and killer assumption logs that give the IC real signal — not just themes
• Qualitative input that shapes which 2 solutions advance to full business plan development at IC#2