Sr. Design Researcher

What We Do/Project

The Sr. Design Researcher will champion user-centered research and design practices for internal web-based applications and platforms used by Studio business users. This role is responsible for uncovering user needs, synthesizing insights, and guiding the design of intuitive, data-driven experiences that simplify complex business workflows and empower faster sharper decision-making.

Job Responsibilities / Typical Day in the Role

• Strategy & Leadership: This role is responsible for shaping a clear research vision for products and prioritizing research opportunities that align with business goals. It will champion a research-driven culture by fostering a department-wide understanding of user needs and promoting best practices in research. Additionally, the role will mentor and coach team members, providing guidance and support to strengthen capabilities and drive impact.
• Research Planning & Execution: The Sr. Design Researcher will plan and conduct interviews, workshops, and usability testing with the end user community to identify explicit and latent pain points and opportunities. They will facilitate these sessions in conjunction with UI/UX Designers, Technical Product Owners and Business Analysts.
• Analysis & Communication: They will help the team synthesize findings into actionable insights and create impactful artifacts such as visualized research outputs in formats like user journey maps, personas/archetypes. They will deliver clear, compelling presentations of findings to diverse audiences and collaborate closely with the design team to translate complex business rules, licensing data, and forecasting logic into intuitive, user-friendly designs.
• Facilitation, Collaboration & Advocacy: This role will coach the team into advocating for the end user throughout the iterative design and development processes. They will collaborate with the Functional Team (UX Team, Technical Product Owners, Business Analysts) and Technical Delivery Team (Scrum Master, Engineers) to ensure insights are incorporated into the design, user stories, and the end product.

Must Have Skills / Requirements

• Proven experience with User Interviews
• 8+ years of experience; Ability to elicit pain points and requirements from users.
• Experience with Quantitative Measurement
• 8+ years of experience; Expertise in capturing and developing data around user behaviors that can be used to inform system design.
• Ability to mentor and coach team members
• 5+ years of experience; Ability to train and coach colleagues in adopting a more user-centric mindset.

Nice To Have Skills / Preferred Requirements

• Design Thinking Certification
• Experience in designing enterprise products or tools
• Experience in software design and development
• Background in Media & Entertainment industry
• Background in Sales Planning & Execution business capabilities
• Branding experience

Soft Skills

• Demonstrate a deep theoretical and practical knowledge of various research methodologies, including qualitative (e.g., interviews, field studies) and quantitative (e.g., surveys, A/B testing) methodologies
• Proven experience with moderate to high complexity projects
• Must have a strong portfolio demonstrating the research process and the impact of findings on project outcomes that includes samples of the following deliverables which are required deliverables for this role:
• Research Roadmap
• Persona / Archetypes
• User Journey Maps
• Experience Maps
• Mental Model Diagrams
• Research Reports & Presentations
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Demonstrated ability to understand and connect with users to uncover their needs and motivations
• Excellent written, verbal and presentation skills to effectively share insights with a diverse team
• Proven ability to mentor various team members
• Experience collaborating with a cross-functional agile product delivery team
• Ability to work independently with little supervision
• Comfort in fast-paced, evolving environments
• Able to show resiliency when dealing with setbacks.

Technology Requirements

• Prototyping Tools (Figma or Adobe Creative Suite)
• Survey Tools (M365 Form, SurveyMonkey)
• Miro (for Whiteboarding & Collaboration)
• Documentation & Reporting Tools (Atlassian Suite: Jira, Confluence. M365)

Education / Certifications

• A bachelor's degree in related fields such as Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Sociology, or Psychology