Director, UX Research & Customer Insight

Headway’s mission is a big one – to build a new mental health care system everyone can access. We’ve built technology that helps people find great therapists with the first software-enabled national network of providers accepting insurance. 

1 in 4 people in the US have a treatable mental health condition, but the majority of providers don’t accept insurance, making therapy too expensive for most people. Headway is building a new mental healthcare system that everyone can access by making it easy for therapists to accept insurance and scale their practice. 

Headway was founded in 2019. Since then, we’ve grown into a diverse, national network of over 45,000 mental healthcare providers across all 50 states who run their practice on our software and have served over 1 million patients. We’re a Series D company with over $325m in funding from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Accel, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Spark Capital, Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures and Health Care Service Corporation.

We want your time here to be the most meaningful experience of your career. Join us, and help change mental healthcare for the better.

About the role:

As the Director of UX Research and Insight at Headway, you'll lead our mission to deeply understand the needs of mental health providers and their patients, transforming these insights into strategic decisions across every part of our business. This is a pivotal leadership role where you'll tackle complex questions spanning product development, marketing strategy, sales enablement, and customer experience, partnering with executives and cross-functional leaders to influence company-wide strategy and roadmaps. You'll build scalable research programs powered by modern tools and methodologies. Your team's work will directly impact thousands of providers and millions of patients seeking accessible mental healthcare while delivering insights with both velocity and rigor.

About the Research Team at Headway:

Research at Headway isn't only a support function. It's a strategic driver of our business. Our lean team has earned credibility through consistent impact on product development. Now, with an explicit executive mandate on building a customer centered company, we're seeking a leader who can scale our influence across the entire organization by accelerating how we collect, share, and drive action on customer insights while transforming how leadership engages in discovery efforts. You'll have the opportunity to build a research function that doesn't just answer questions but shapes the questions we ask, ensuring every major decision is grounded in deep customer understanding.

Core responsibilities include:

Team & Organizational Impact 

• Lead and develop a world-class team of researchers with diverse expertise, including qualitative and quantitative research, UX research, market research, and clinical research, as well as program managers. 
• Cross-functional leadership for cultivating customer centric culture and programs: Voice of Customers, Touch Grass, Dogfooding.
• Operational excellence in establishing repeatable team processes and forums to facilitate the sharing of insights. 

Research Excellence

• Balance different research and experiment methodologies to address business needs.
• Implement and oversee a centralized research repository for knowledge sharing.
• Establish scalable and foundational customer insight artifacts: including persona, JTBD, customer journeys, etc. 
• Select and manage key research tools and platforms (UserTesting, Qualtrics, etc.).

Strategic Research Leadership

• Drive research initiatives that inform executive decision-making and product strategy with senior ICs.
• Translate business questions into actionable research plans
• Present impactful insights to leadership, highlighting strategic implications

You'll be a great fit if:

• You have 5+ years of experience as a people manager with a track record of building and leading high performing teams that have effectively delivered business outcomes through technical investments.
• You have 5+ years of experience as an IC researcher in a company with mature research practices.
• You are able to see things at a 300-ft view, while driving ground floor initiatives.
• You have a strong product mindset, having built strong cross-functional relationships that build trust with users and influence product strategy and roadmaps. 
• You demonstrate executive presence and effectively communicates research value to C-suite and board-level stakeholders