Principal UX Researcher

Summary

Join Udemy as our Principal Strategic User Researcher and provide insights driving strategy and execution for global consumer and B2B learning products. You will uncover customer behaviors and communicate them to partners to create optimal learning products. A key role involves mentoring fellow researchers and pioneering processes for advancing strategic UX research methods. You will bridge product, design, and business partners, ensuring user needs are prioritized in organizational decisions. This hybrid position requires two days a week in the office and offers a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package. You will be a user advocate, influencing short and long-term product strategy, and possess a deep passion for uncovering user needs.

Requirements

• 7+years experience in applied product/design research, design strategy, or equivalent education
• You have a demonstrable track record of a variety of generative and/or evaluative research methods
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Human Factors, HCI, Psychology, Sociology, Cognitive Science, Research & Strategy, Anthropology or related field. Ph.D. or Master’s degree a plus
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, and drive clarity that brings the user, technology, and business together
• Excellent English oral and written communication skills, including the ability to articulate and present rationale behind your design decisions

Responsibilities

• Lead, manage and coach other researchers how to deliver impactful and actionable insights beyond just summarizing findings
• Put users first and partner closely with cross-functional partners so that they can deeply learn to empathize and solve for user needs and wants
• Build alliances with Design & Product teams to be the tip of the spear in understanding and quantifying the behavior, needs and goals of our viewers
• Collaborate and partner with the Inclusive Design team to stay current on the latest inclusive practices and apply them into the strategic research process. Inversely, you will also diffuse cutting edge strategic practices to be embedded into the inclusive design process
• Create to a process for creating frameworks so that other researchers and partners can easily learn strategic methods of synthesis and story-telling
• Create a coaching program to scale strategic thinking across the research team, as well as within Product Design and beyond. Your goal is to teach strategic UX research processes across various levels so that others can simultaneously learn how to teach others in the organization (e.g. Train the Trainer, White Glove coaching, etc.)
• Design and execute a wide variety of research projects ranging from early discovery and ideation to design validation
• Generate insights, recommendations and presentations to influence and inspire product decisions and designs
• Mentor colleagues across the company in conducting effective user research, from guerrilla to formalized
• Pioneer, perfect and codify the use of innovative new research methods for the team
• Design engaging workshops with internal teams to create cross-functional alignment and ideate solutions based on known user needs
• Run co-creation workshops with users to further develop future concepts and solutions
• Develop impactful presentation decks that help visualize user stories while increasing research understanding (and impact) within the organization
• Build trust and effective relationships with cross-functional teams

Preferred Qualifications

• A strong storyteller, able to clearly articulate research insights in unique ways that meet the needs of different audiences
• A relentless user advocate on a mission to create deep user empathy across the organization
• Expert in a wide range of strategic and generative design research methods, including but not limited to ethnographic field studies, contextual inquiries, diary studies, survey design, and qualitative concept testing
• Familiar with quantitative concept testing, card sorting, A/B testing, usability, benchmarking, competitive analysis, etc
• Adept at creating compelling mixed methods frameworks that describe qualitative and quantitative research findings
• Proven success communicating research findings and insights effectively to peers, managers, directors and above to drive consensus, alignment and strategy
• Passionate about your craft and adopting (where it makes sense) industry innovations
• Excellent at communicating research findings, insights, recommendations and methodology
• A collaborator and partner with peers in product, design and engineering, but also a leader - adept at driving the right research at the right time and ensuring our product design process results in the right product & product experience for our viewers
• Self motivated, can work independently in defining their process and delivery milestones
• An ambassador for design who brings diverse stakeholders together to align and work together to solve problems

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life/AD&D, and disability coverage
• HSA/FSA/Commuter: Pre-tax savings/spending plans, including HSA employer contributions
• Transgender Benefits: Expanded medical coverage for gender-affirming care
• Parental Benefits: Financial assistance for fertility (including egg-freezing), adoption, and surrogacy expenses; twelve weeks of paid family bonding for birth, surrogacy, adoption, and foster placement (plus up to six to ten weeks of paid disability leave for birthing parents) as well as a two-week “ease-back” program that enables parents to return part-time at full pay
• Whole U: Fully paid memberships for meditation/mindfulness, therapy/coaching visits, financial planning, fertility and family building, maternity and newborn care, parenting and pediatrics, menopause care, breastmilk shipping, and caregiving support
• Learning: Free access to Udemy and Udemy Business plus a yearly stipend to spend on professional development
• Retirement: Pre-tax and Roth 401(k) plan with an employer contribution
• Vacation: Flexible vacation for salaried Udemates and fifteen days per year for hourly
• Holidays: Twelve paid holidays throughout the year