UXR - Core Experience

Summary

Join Gusto as a Staff UX Researcher and lead research strategy across platform teams, partnering with Design and Product to define direction and shape research roadmaps grounded in customer needs. You will work across pods, influence product strategy, and ensure the delivery of cohesive, system-driven experiences. This role also involves scaling research practices, empowering cross-functional teams to conduct research, and acting as a key partner to Design, Engineering, Data, and PM. You will report to the Head of UX Research and collaborate with various teams to lead research throughout the product lifecycle, aligning with strategic priorities. Your insights will connect business goals with customer needs, shaping products and services for millions of small businesses and their employees. This high-impact role is ideal for someone excited to lead research at scale and elevate the craft across a platform team.

Requirements

• 8+ years leading impactful user research projects, ideally with some experience on a platform team
• Strong mixed-methods research skills—qualitative and quantitative—with experience supporting full customer journeys, from software to service
• Skilled at selecting the right methods for the problem, with a clear understanding of tradeoffs and impact
• Strong opinions, loosely held. Comfortable in healthy debate and focused on alignment and progress
• Thrives in fast-paced, dynamic environments. Proactive and adaptable, with strong stakeholder management skills
• Passionate about Gusto’s mission and driven to improve the lives of small business owners and employees
• Experienced in scaling research through democratization—mentoring others and embedding research into everyday team workflows
• Committed to continuous learning and to growing as a research leader and teammate

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain a strategic research roadmap in partnership with cross-functional leadership and other stakeholders—spanning both generative and evaluative work
• Work with Data science to ensure we have ‘whys’ for our ‘whats’, be opinionated about how we measure success
• Proactively identify research opportunities across the Core Experiences org
• Spot and connect overlapping UXR efforts across Gusto, leveraging existing or ongoing research, and adding value to existing studies
• Drive generative research that is cross-team, or even cross-org
• Drive research democratization by creating tools, training, and frameworks that enable others to conduct effective, lightweight evaluative research
• Address end-to-end customer journey needs, including platform-specific considerations like mobile, to ensure a holistic understanding of user experiences
• Make research actionable for teams by identifying insights from observations, and how they may influence or impact product decisions
• Craft a compelling story around UXR insights that is easy to digest for stakeholders and product teams
• Evaluate emerging methods and tools, and bring new approaches into the research toolkit
• Participate in team Design Jams and identify where research can influence decisions or should be done in the absence of customer insights
• Partner with Design Ops to shape scalable research practices and operational foundations
• Collaborate with Data Science, Marketing, CX, and Sales to uncover patterns in customer behaviors, attitudes, and opportunities

Preferred Qualifications

• Have deep knowledge of UX research methods and their application in fast-moving, ambiguous environments
• Have an opinion and desire to utilise AI within your research process, and an openness engaging with it
• Be flexible, detail-oriented, and operate with an intrapreneurial mindset and strong ownership
• Act independently while collaborating confidently—driving clarity and alignment across disciplines
• Champion both research and design, with a holistic view of experience quality
• Show genuine empathy for small business owners and employees, and a desire to serve their needs through thoughtful product development
• Experience working on platform teams or systems-related projects
• In-house research experience with emerging technologies
• Background in Human-Centered Design, HCI, Design Thinking, Systems Thinking, or Service Design

Benefits

• Competitive compensation packages with a strong emphasis on equity based compensation (ownership in Gusto)
• Our cash compensation range for this role is $139,000/yr to $199,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $179,000/yr to $221,000/yr in San Francisco, Seattle & New York
• Gusto has physical office spaces in Denver, San Francisco, and New York City
• Employees who are based in those locations will be expected to work from the office on designated days approximately 2-3 days per week (or more depending on role)
• When approved to work from a location other than a Gusto office, a secure, reliable, and consistent internet connection is required