UX Research Program Manager

UX Research Program Manager –UX and Design 

We are seeking a UX Research Program Manager to join our UX Research Operations team.  You will partner directly with UX Research Leadership and teams to enable and mature UX Research across organization by establishing clear and efficient research best practices, streamlining and scaling research programs and tooling, and owning the administrative complexities for the team so that researchers and designers can focus on solving client and user problems.

You’ll bring exceptional communication and project management skills to the team, along with a deep understanding and passion for user research and its methodologies. You’ll help us ensure the team’s success in conducting research activities that drive better user experiences. You will manage critical functions of the UX Research team, onboarding and managing vendors, creating internal guides and templates to reinforce research best practices, tracking research budgets, facilitating recruitment efforts, and tracking and reporting on research impact. You'll also develop processes and workflows that allow the team to effectively scale as it grows.
 

Responsibilities: 

Planning

• Understand the UX research team and its priorities, and how its work fits into the wider UX and Design landscape.
• Collaborate across UX teams to scale and execute program and project plans end-to-end, thinking about how to optimize resourcing, time, and funding investment. 
• Proactively identify risks, and mitigation plans for those risks, before they become issues; adapt our strategy as needed to minimize project impact.

Programs

• Manage the operations of research programs that will promote the user voice across various business lines and products in a consistency, efficient, and streamlined manner. 
• Oversee development and maintenance of best practice templates, screeners, access, and training to ensure consistency in research across teams who utilize this tool.
• Research Repository: Develop and maintain best practices related to the development of a research repository, including the process to store, tag, share, and communicate research and insights across the Design organization.

Calculating Research Impact

• Tracking product and design improvements from UX Research efforts (converting this to ROI).
• Producing regular reporting and data summaries for leadership to communicate the work of the UX Research Team for various views such as volume, impact, methods used, gaps, hurdles, etc., ensuring all areas of the organization are represented.

Vendor Management

• Managing vendor partnerships to ensure smooth onboarding and usage for UX Research Team. This includes collecting regular feedback from UX Research Team to evaluate effectiveness of each partnership.

Culture

• Leading research team culture initiatives to ensure team cohesion.

Communication

• Own recurring stakeholder updates; serving as bridge between UX Research and cross-functional teams and leaders.
• Constant advocate for sharing, socializing, and evangelizing the value of user research throughout the organization.
  • Scale research operations by defining and formalizing repeatable processes and best practices.

Research Best Practices and Process

• User recruitment screening for moderated and unmoderated research
• Templates for generative and evaluative research methods
• Research measurement best practices
• User panel and tool management and streamlines access 
• Creating and managing internal resource materials to streamline the team’s ways of working and understanding of research vendors and capabilities (e.g., vendor guides, templates, research briefs).
• Oversee research participant recruitment efforts, including outreach to vendors and construction of a directory of participants. 
• Own the roll out and partner toolkit definition to scale our self-service research program beyond the UX Research Team when appropriate.

Qualifications: 

• 5+ years of relevant experience in UX research operations 
• 3+ years of experience leading end to end UX Research project delivery for large, cross-functional project teams.
• Experience managing research operations such as recruiting, scheduling, and vendor management
• Experience with processes related to socialization and evangelism of research and research best practices, highlighting impact
• Extremely detail-oriented with a focus on process definition 
• Proactive self-starter with great follow-up skills
• Experience working with UX Research teams across multiple research methods and activities, spanning both qualitative and quantitative disciplines 
• Experience with UX research workstreams including user recruitment and scheduling, panel management, vendor management, policy and legal governance, backlog/pipeline prioritization, impact tracking, knowledge management systems/portals 
• Experience developing and maintaining team resources and communications, including templates, playbooks, and training calendars.
• Passion for planning, tracking, organizing logistics, process, details, and documentation.
• Advanced project management and execution skills 
• Excellent communicator: clear and proactive during intake and when creating outputs
• Ability to execute in a large, matrixed organization 
• Knowledge of user experience measurement and setting KPIs
• Experience escalating issues, making trade-off decisions, balancing constraints, and communicating risk
• Understanding of UX design, and common design processes
• Experience working in a collaborative multi-disciplinary team and working directly with designers, product managers, and engineers
• Experience with forecasting and budgeting
• Experience with research and design in Agile/Scrum
• Well versed in Qualtrics, UserZoom, EnjoyHQ, and other common research platforms
• Jira expertise preferred
  • Bachelor’s/University degree

Education: 

 
This job description provides a high-level review of the types of work performed. Other job-related duties may be assigned as required. 

Compensation, Benefits and Duration

Minimum Compensation: USD 52,000
Maximum Compensation: USD 182,000
Compensation is based on actual experience and qualifications of the candidate. The above is a reasonable and a good faith estimate for the role.
Medical, vision, and dental benefits, 401k retirement plan, variable pay/incentives, paid time off, and paid holidays are available for full time employees.
This position is not available for independent contractors
No applications will be considered if received more than 120 days after the date of this post