I work as a researcher (ML for robotics) inside a product company so I can speak to this a little. The research I work on generally takes a year between conception and publication (three months of tinkering, six months of refinement and benchmarking, three months to write and submit a paper). Now, I work on more than one of these projects at a time but they all have a similar cadence (conference deadlines do that for you), and can be "measured" by management the same way a year-long engineering project is. The questions I'm asked (or ask myself) and the same as when I was a pure engineer. Are you making headway? Are you on schedule? Do you need help? Should this project be abandoned or rescoped if it's not succeeding? Etc.