Principal User Experience Researcher

Job Requisition ID #

Position Overview: 

We are seeking a proactive, strategic and empathetic Principal User Experience Researcher to join our team. In this role, you will be responsible for conducting impactful research with cross-functional teams as well as coordinating research across several product domains. This researcher will report to the UX Research Practice Manager. You will be a team lead with some managerial responsibilities. 

You will work with and help to coach a team of embedded researchers focused on delivering actionable insights that drive the design of impactful experiences in a fast-paced production environment. You will facilitate seamless collaboration, provide essential coaching and support, and ensure continuity of experiences from end-to-end. Your service-based leadership will be key in fostering a culture of continuous improvement, experimentation, and innovation. 

Key Responsibilities: 

1. Team Leadership and Development 

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of UX researchers 

• Foster a collaborative and innovative team environment to scale and increase performance velocity by modeling and empowering a can-do attitude 

• Facilitate prioritization of projects, working with the UX Research Practice Manager, to balance workload and project assignments across the team 

• Collaborate proactively on practice maturity, effective use of tools and modern practices, including effective application of AI  

2. Research Coordination 

• Develop relationships across the company understanding existing research and insights to inform your team’s research projects and collaborate on end-to-end research that looks across the customer journey 

• Drive a culture of experimentation earlier in the design & development process 

• Identify opportunities and deliver tests based on service prototypes, low-fi prototypes, participatory research activities during design workshops, etc.  

• Drive a culture of experimentation later in the design & development process 

• Develop and deliver testing protocols for a CI/CD environment (feature flags, multivariant testing, etc.) 

• Partner with UX Manager to integrate information from tools like Fullstory to gather and recommend insights from in-production experiences 

• Partner with Journey Management practice to catalog and manage insights in the context of various journeys  

3. Collaboration and Communication 

• Work closely with UX designers, service designers, product managers, and engineers to integrate research findings into the design decision-making process 

• Advocate for user-centered design principles across the organization and linked to product roadmaps 

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