Staff UX Research Lead / Contract / Hybrid / San Francisco, CA

Exciting UX Research Lead opportunity with an established firm.

Contract Duration: 4 – 5 months

Hybrid role - San Francisco offices

Required Skills & Experience

Our client’s team values diverse individual experiences.

This role is defined as Staff UX Researcher, but you may not have called yourself this in the past.

Other ways of describing yourself may include Design Researcher, Human Factors Researcher, or Customer Insights.

Here are the experiences and skills we’re looking for:

• 7 - 10+ yrs experience in research
• BA/BS degree in Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive

Sciences, other related fields, or equivalent practical experience

• Comfortable presenting to groups, working cross-functionally to build relationships, and crafting compelling stories from data
• Understanding of different qualitative and quantitative research methods, including when and how to apply them during each product phase
• A sincere passion for well-crafted user experiences that are usable, beautiful and, most importantly, solve for customers' needs
• Experience with human-centered design process, starting with user insights, ideating, prototyping, and iterating based on user feedback

What You Will Be Doing

• You will collaborate with a team of UX Designers, Product Managers, Engineers and cross-functional stakeholders to answer our client’s team questions about what their internal and external customers need, desire, and aspire to so that they can build empathy and develop best-in-class digital experiences.
• You will support all product verticals within our product and technology team, including buyer, seller,

growth, sales, vendor, and operations, and will occasionally support or lead cross-functional research studies to address enterprise-level initiatives.

• As such, you will develop and maintain a user research roadmap in

support of our client’s 18-month roadmap and future vision for the customer experience.

• You are customer obsessed and an advocate for all users.
• You are an expert at using qualitative research methods (interviews, field/diary studies, etc.) and quantitative methods (surveys, e.g.) to shape product development and influence overall strategy.
• You are passionate about pursuing the WHY behind what

people think, say, do, and feel, and youre able to turn this into clear and actionable strategies that inspire our cross-functional teams on what they should do next.

• While a large part of your role is to uncover insights and provide strategic direction, you will also maintain our client’s Co-Creation panel and take on the roles of recruiter and coordinator when fielding your research.
• You’ll work with partners and stakeholders from across the company, telling the real stories behind your work to drive consensus, ship meaningful products, and amplify the role of human-centered design within the company.

What You Will Get To Do Every Day

• Design and conduct generative, evaluative, and usability research studies in support of all product verticals
• Support and sometimes lead research studies in service of broader business initiatives, collaborating with cross-functional partners in marketing, merchandising, sales, and operations, for example
• Influence 18-month roadmap and future vision by synthesizing insights across multiple studies that cut across product verticals
• Design and conduct qualitative studies, including user interviews, remote, and in-person usability studies, field visits, diary studies, personas for existing and future products.
• Design and conduct quantitative studies, such as structuring and analyzing surveys to evaluate potential product directions and capture insights at scale.
• Larger efforts may include segmentations and pricing research.
• Synthesize and communicate research findings to advise business decisions through rich storytelling via presentations, reports, workshops, and any other novel, creative approaches that you invent
• Collaborate with designers, product managers, data scientists, marketing, operations managers, and engineers to ensure research provides a holistic view of our users
• Establish user research best practices across our client’s different working groups
• Mentor designers & junior members of the team on user research best practices
• Develop new tools and processes to uncover rich customer insights
• Manage our client’s internal research resource, The Co-Creation Panel, including recruitment, payment, and ongoing panel management
• Establish a consumer-centric culture and how to drive insights into our daily work
• Be a trusted voice of research and the voice of the user at our client