Senior Director, Product Innovation Research & Strategy

Company Description

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

We're not just building products in Visa Innovation & Digital Partnerships, we're reshaping the future of Payments. We believe in challenging the status quo and crafting solutions that not only solve existing problems but that also reimagine how the payments ecosystem could evolve to better meet the needs of all stakeholders and end users.  

In this role, you'll be a crucial member of our Global Insights + Product Innovation team, guiding a team of research practitioners across North America, EU, Latin America, CEMEA, and Asia Pacific. You’ll work closely with VPs of Insights, Design, and Product to understand and map priorities within regions and manage and deploy research resources across all five markets, looking for opportunities for researchers to collaborate across regions.  

This is a people manager role in which you will lead the product research portfolio across 5 regions. With your extensive background and research expertise across the full product development lifecycle, you’ll help researchers prioritize, design, and execute research and ensure that insights are embedded in all product roadmaps. You will manage and grow the Innovation research team and scale the team and its knowledge as needed with responsibility of overseeing and guiding the teams in their day-to-day research and with the expectation that insights will drive product strategy and shape decisions throughout the product lifecycle.  

Your Mission: 

• Pioneer uncharted territory: 0-1 product innovation focus – Lead research initiatives for new product concepts to uncover unmet needs and inspire solutions that add value to our business, our customers, and the payments ecosystem. Research will be leading / guiding by unearthing insights that shape and support the Innovation Teams’ product roadmaps.  

• Lead and mentor, globally: Remit is global across our 5 regions. This role will be helping to manage in-region researchers and research even as we are also always looking for opportunities to collaborate and get smarter together, faster, across regions 

• Become a research guide: Lead the product team through every stage of the development journey, from initial ideation to user testing and refinement. 

• Craft compelling narratives: Weave quantitative and qualitative data into compelling user stories and strategic frameworks to spark and structure the solutioning process with cross-functional partners, such as designers, engineers, and product leaders. 

• Challenge assumptions: Don't shy away from questioning convention as well as questioning assumptions and hypotheses about solutions. Push the boundaries of traditional research methods and explore unconventional sources of insight to unearth hidden gems. 

• Embrace rapid iteration: Adapt and evolve your research approach as ideas pivot and prototypes transform, ensuring continuous user input fuels the innovation cycle. 

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 10 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters/MBA /JD/MD), or a minimum of 5 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications:

• 15 or more years of experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 12 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, or MD), PhD with 9+ years of experience
• 10+ years of experience in user experience research, with demonstrable experience designing and executing research across the full product development lifecycle

• Lead and conduct end-to-end mixed methods research (both qualitative and quantitative) to inform product design and strategy 

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including design, product management, and engineering, to integrate user research at every stage of the product development process