Lead User Experience Researcher (On-Call)

The Company

ICF is a mission-driven company filled with people who care deeply about improving the lives of others and making the world a better place. Our core values include Embracing Difference; we seek candidates who are passionate about building a culture that encourages, embraces, and hires dimensions of difference.

@ ICF Next Government, we are fearless in finding new ways to solve problems, relentless in making sure it pays off for our clients and committed to making a positive change in the world. Join our community of mission-driven creatives, communicators, strategists, and technologists to challenge the status quo.

We’re currently hiring for a Senior User Researcher (Part-Time; ~29 hours/week).

The Team

This position will report into ICF’s Experience Practice within the Digital Line of Business. This practice includes a large team of professionals in fields such as content strategy and information architecture; user experience research and design; digital performance optimization through web analytics, testing, search, and feedback tools; and customer experience strategy.

This matrixed team supports primarily federal technology and CX projects across many ICF divisions. The team’s goal is to apply unconventional intelligence and human-centered design to deliver better experiences to the people who matter most to our clients. By joining this team, you’ll work across an exciting, diverse range of clients in many domains. You’ll enjoy the thrill of solving complex digital challenges while improving the lives of the people who interact with the systems we design.

The Work

When you join ICF’s Experience Practice you will work on projects that matter to our country’s health, environment and technological advancements. In your role as User Researcher, your work will require:

• Conducting formative and exploratory research.
• Creating findings and recommendations reports to inform project decisions related to product, design, and content.
• Collaborating with project teams and clients to help clients better understand their primary audiences and improve their digital products.

The Role

The User Researcher must:

• Have strong user experience research skills to help lead and conduct user research projects including usability studies, user interviews, heuristic evaluations, card sorting, tree testing, etc.
• Work with clients and team members to discover and understand business requirements and develop and carry out user research activities.
• Analyze and synthesize feedback from internal stakeholders and internal and external users and present findings and recommendations to project teams and clients.

In addition to research skills, the User Researcher must:

• Have strong client relationship management and project management skills.
• Be comfortable interfacing with clients and proactively speaking up to drive projects forward in a way that is tactful, thoughtful, and collaborative.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.

Key Responsibilities

• Support clients to make data-driven decisions about improving user experience metrics using both qualitative and quantitative methods and data.
• Work collaboratively with the project team to understand user experience goals and gaps.
• Host workshops with client stakeholders to understand their needs and assumptions about end users.
• Identify target audiences; draft jobs-to-be-done and journey maps.
• Conduct heuristic evaluations and comparative analyses.
• Develop research plans, moderator guides, and conduct user research activities, especially user interviews.
• Complete qualitative analysis to identify key insights and develop recommendation reports.
• Proactively communicate with all relevant team members to manage team and client expectations, project plans and timelines.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience as a UX researcher with an Assocaites degree in psychology, sociology, industrial design health, safety medicine life sciences, human-computer interaction, computer science, library science, or a related field.
• 3+ years' experience creating research plans, moderator guides, and recommendations reports.
• 3+ years' experience facilitating client sessions and user interviews.
• 3+ years' experience analyzing and synthesizing qualitative data.
• 3+ years' experience recruiting participants for research studies.
• 3+ years' experience in client-facing roles requiring tactful communications in fast-moving workplace.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills with a focus on attention to detail to produce client-ready reports and presentations.
• Ability to collaborate with teams in an