Many linguists have found meaningful employment in research.  Some who have been profiled on Career Linguistic the Resources section for Career Profiles include Nancy Frishberg who works in user experience, as do Tamara Hale, and Casey Songin-Smith; Julie Solomon who does program evaluation; and Linda Lombardi, who does research and writing. So there are many places where linguists can do research.

There are also many ways that linguists can work in an organization that focuses on research.  For example, I work for a research firm, the FrameWorks Institute, but those of us who work there do very different things. While some of my colleagues spend their days conducting interviews, organizing and analyzing data so that findings may be reported out in a variety of channels: written reports, briefs, or orally in presentations, I spend most of my time in instructional and curriculum design.  We also hire writers, editors, graphic designers, web designers, videographers, animators, project managers.  All of us spend time supporting new business development.  Many of us spend a great deal of time and energy in client relationship management, or in coaching our clients about the best ways to implement our communications recommendations.  We create communications toolkits, as part of which one might be called upon to write texts ranging in length and impact from a tweet to an op-ed or legislative testimony.

Some organizations of Interest who have hired linguists:

Harder and Co.
Fors Marsh
Gallup
Cultural Logic
Mitre
National Endowment for the Humanities

Some research blogs to follow:

Research to action

Qualitative Research blogs

The art of conversation

Some places to do research about careers in research: 

15 minutes to develop your research career – A new podcast from Vitae

A great post on job options for researchers from jobsontoast