User Experience Researcher

At Macmillan Learning, we're committed to driving innovation that transforms education. We seek team members who thrive on pushing boundaries, envisioning future possibilities, and building solutions that make a lasting impact. Whether you're a Pioneer shaping bold new ideas, a Builder turning possibilities into reality, or a Stabilizer optimizing for success, you'll play a vital role in advancing our mission. If you're excited by the prospect of testing new technologies, implementing transformative strategies, and thriving in a fast-paced, innovative environment, we’d love to hear from you! 

The User Experience Researcher supports Macmillan Learning's ideation and development of digital resources guided by findings and data from their research. This role, along with a UX Designer counterpart, is responsible for the entire product life cycle, starting with problem discovery and definition, through conceptual design, testing, and collaboration with our technology teams to implementation. This role works with a team of researchers and coordinators to produce generative and evaluative insights that advise our product vision and delivery. This role partners with UX designers, product managers, learning and impact researchers, and data scientists to turn research into measurable user insights.

We know that talented candidates sometimes hesitate to apply when they don't meet every single qualification listed. We encourage you to apply if you're excited about this role and believe you can contribute meaningfully to our team, even if your background doesn't align perfectly with every requirement. We're looking for people who are passionate about our mission and can bring valuable perspectives to our work. Different experiences, skills, and approaches all have the potential to strengthen what we do. If this opportunity interests you, we'd love to hear how your unique background and abilities could contribute to our team's success. We're committed to building a workplace where everyone can do their best work and where diverse viewpoints are valued. We encourage all qualified candidates to apply - we're excited to learn about the different ways you might add value to our organization.

Major responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Manage UX Research Operations

• Define and maintain standards for UX research.
•  Establish and track progress on research goals.
•  Plan and design user research of all types, both generative and evaluative.
•  Drive the end-to-end user research lifecycle for certain projects, including selection of methods that align with research questions and business goals.
•  Design and analyze qualitative studies that find opportunities by way of meaningful insights.
•  Helping to shape the vision to transform UX Research for Macmillan Learning across the entire educational ecosystem.
•  Leading end-to-end product design initiatives, from early problem discovery through solution design, prototyping, and testing.
•  Support technical leads and developers by providing functional clarification and setting expectations with teammates and stakeholders.

Lead and Conduct User-centered Design Research

• Lead and provide insight to the product and learning research team to deeply understand business and learning needs and influence the ultimate goals and strategy of our products.
•  Identify product improvement opportunities by synthesizing multiple sources of information (field work, interviews, quantitative data mining, market literature, etc.).
•  Synthesize research to frame problems, uncover insights, and tell stories that build alignment and buy-in with your team and stakeholders.
•  Establish research tools, standards, frameworks to level up the team’s ability to conduct, communicate, and catalog quality research.

Develop Research Strategy

• Establish strategic research goals that will help us identify unmet user needs, learning needs, market trends, and new business opportunities.
•  Innovate methods for sharing research insights that democratize research by making insights easily available across the organization in ways that foster a human-centered culture across the organization.
•  Build organizational understanding of the value realized by building products on user research, learning research, and impact research as an integrated whole.

UX Research Mentorship and Leadership

• Plan with fellow researchers in learning research, impact research, data science, editorial, and marketing to build and foster a research culture that impacts the organization as a whole.
• Coach and mentor researchers on your team.
•  Provide ongoing education on user research to our company.