Head of Design Research

We’re now looking for a Head of Design Research. This will be someone who has mastered the craft of turning data into insights, who can inspire organizations and their team through storytelling and who can ensure our design solutions are solving real user needs. If you are both an experienced manager and practitioner who can help push things in the right direction we’d love to hear from you.

What we’re looking for:

• Coach
  • Coach researchers to become their very best. This means you train and mentor your researchers to get better in their craft and everything else related to the profession: how to collaborate, how to communicate, how to present, how to inspire, how to leverage different methods, and how to recruit.
  • Dedicate time to coaching your team in weekly 1:1 meetings, where you’ll check-in on their development and provide any feedback on their performance.
  • Dedicate time to coaching your team as a group, either in dedicated crits or hosting learning workshops.
• Bridge
  • Comfortable talking to executives, whether it’s to explain research programmes or to make the case for spending money, whether on people or resources.
  • Coordinate with design leads, product leads, technology leads, and people in other functions in order to make sure your teams’ work is appropriately integrated with the larger whole.
• Direct
  • Beyond enabling the function of research to be effective, we want you to enhance research effectiveness and amplify the voice of our users. Your role is to create a shared vision that guides teams towards a common goal or north star.
  • We do this by listening to our team, the other departments, and absorbing the existing company goals, beliefs and strategies.

What you’ll do

• Manage and support a small team of researchers.
• Define, plan, and conduct user research.
• Deliver compelling insights to the design team and beyond.
• Develop and build on our mixed-methods research practice.
• Facilitate evidence-based design decisions.
• Collaborate across Design and R&D to elevate the practice of research across the company.

📍This role can be based in one of our tech hubs in Helsinki, Berlin or Stockholm, or you can work remotely anywhere in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, and Estonia. Read more about our remote setup here. If you live outside of these countries - not to worry! We provide relocation support to help you make your way to Finland, Germany or Sweden.

• You have several years experience in a research role in a consumer-focused company to lead and coach other researchers.
• Helping your team of researchers to develop their craft and elevating the work they do across the business.
• You have a degree in HCI, Psychology, Human Computer Interaction, Social Science, or a related field.
• You have broad experience of qualitative research methods
• You are comfortable planning, scoping, conducting, analysing and communicating research.
• You are familiar with quantitative research methods, such as metrics and A/B tests, and are able to synthesise quantitative data with qualitative user research.
• You’re a great storyteller, who is able to speak fluently to business people, designers, engineers and other stakeholders (in English).
• You enjoy collaborative work in a dynamic, creative environment.

The position will be filled as soon as we find the right person, so make sure to apply as soon as you realize you really, really want to join us!

The compensation will be a negotiable combination of monthly pay and DoorDash RSUs. The latter makes it exceptionally easy to be excited about our company growing and doing well, as you’ll own a piece of the pie.

For any further questions about the position, you can turn to Product+ Talent Acquisition Partner - Elif Dilan Ayaz ([email protected]).