Principal UX Design Researcher

Join us as we work to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

We are looking for a Principal Design Researcher to join our DesignOps team within the User Experience division. Your job will be to conduct user research projects within product development and service delivery, coach Product Org individuals on research methods, collaborate with teams, and provide insights to shape user-centered healthcare experiences.

Our DesignOps Team is comprised of qualitative and quantitative user researchers, research coordinators, and strategic designers. We take a human-centered approach to strengthen athenahealth’s user research capability and ensure our products and services serve users’ needs. 

But enough about us, let’s talk about you.

Your work is driven by an empathetic understanding of people. You have experience using qualitative research methods to glean user insights and identify design opportunities. You can distill findings into easily digestible formats, and you have excellent communication skills for audiences at different levels and roles. You bring a consultative approach to build and maintain collaborative relationships and lead stakeholders through the process. You’re comfortable being flexible and iterative under ambiguity and you can make progress amidst competing priorities and multiple stakeholders.

Job Responsibilities

• Partner with project teams to lead qualitative research efforts that will shape product and service experiences.
• Advise and mentor teams on user research methods such as: observation/shadowing, desk research, site visits, interviewing, usability testing, and surveys.
• Generate and communicate actionable research findings back to teams in the form of presentations, frameworks, storyboards, high-level concepts, journey maps, and service blueprints.
• Facilitate workshops to achieve stakeholder goals and help teams translate opportunities into discrete actions
• Develop new, scalable resources and processes to improve research quality across the Product Organization.
• Collaborate with quantitative teammates to produce user-centered research that will inform product and design decision-making.

Typical Qualifications

• Research/Design Strategy professional with strong interviewing, observation, and analysis skills
• Bachelor’s Degree in Design, Anthropology, Sociology, Cognitive Psychology, Computer Science, or related discipline required
• 8+ years professional research experience within a product development team or design/innovation consulting
• Experience applying a range of user research methods such as interviews, site visits, user observation, workshop facilitation, remote moderated/unmoderated testing, surveying, jobs-to-be-done, usability testing, concept validation
• Experience establishing collaborative relationships across teams, cohorts, and disciplines
• Able to distill insights into easily consumable formats for different audiences, such as presentations, visuals and frameworks
• Able to clearly present findings and provide sound rationale for recommendations to gain others’ support and commitment
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills

About athenahealth

Here’s our vision: To create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.  

What’s unique about our locations? 
From an historic, 19th century arsenal to a converted, landmark power plant, all of athenahealth’s offices were carefully chosen to represent our innovative spirit and promote the most positive and productive work environment for our teams. Our 10 offices across the United States and India — plus numerous remote employees — all work to modernize the healthcare experience, together. 
 
Our company culture might be our best feature. 
We don't take ourselves too seriously. But our work? That’s another story. athenahealth develops and implements products and services that support US healthcare