Senior UX Researcher & Strategist

**Introduction**

At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You'll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM's product and technology landscape. Here, you'll have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world.

• *Your role and responsibilities**

As a member of the Secure Product group, you will sit at the intersection of strategy, operations, and mentorship. You will lead research that doesn't just inform a single feature, but shapes the trajectory of our entire product portfolio.

Your Key Responsibilities

• Lead Strategic Initiatives: Drive cross-team and cross-functional research focusing on product-market fit, roadmap prioritization, and deep audience insights.
• Synthesize the "Big Picture": Connect the dots across multiple projects to reveal broader patterns, helping teams think beyond their immediate sprint cycles.
• Build the Infrastructure: Develop and scale research playbooks, repositories, and knowledge-sharing systems to raise the collective "Research IQ" of the team.
• Evangelize Insights: Translate complex findings into inspiring, actionable narratives that align with both business goals and customer needs.
• Empower & Coach: Act as a research force-multiplier. You'll provide coaching and operational support to designers, helping them run their own reliable day-to-day studies.
• *Required technical and professional expertise**
• 7+ Years of Research Leadership: A proven track record of leading qualitative and quantitative research that shapes product strategy (not just UI/UX tweaks).
• The "Coach" Mindset: Experience mentoring non-researchers and partners, tailoring your teaching style to different skill levels and confidence bars.
• Operational Excellence: You've built or scaled research repositories, templates, and systems that make research repeatable and accessible.
• Enterprise Fluency: Experience in SaaS, developer platforms, or technically complex domains where you must bridge the gap between technical users and business stakeholders.
• *Preferred technical and professional experience**
• Strategic Catalyst: Proven track record of leading research that fundamentally shifts product strategy and influences long-term executive roadmaps.
• Design Empowerment: Passionate about equipping design teams with deep customer insights and actionable frameworks (personas, journey maps) that fuel confident, user-centric building.
• Culture of Empathy: You believe customer empathy is a team sport. You don't just "deliver" insights; you co-develop them and coach others to experiment and grow.
• Methodological Innovation: You find patterns where others see noise. You enjoy experimenting with new methods-and when the right tool doesn't exist, you invent it.
• Stakeholder Alignment: You treat internal stakeholders as customers, designing research programs and deliverables that account for their specific constraints and business goals.
• Engaging Storytelling: You value research that is not only robust and valid but also inspiring enough to move a high-level technical organization to action.

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.