Senior UX Researcher (Horizontal)

About Gusto

Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. On top of full-service payroll, Gusto offers health insurance, 401(k)s, expert HR, and team management tools. Today, Gusto offices in Denver, San Francisco, and New York serve more than 200,000 businesses nationwide.

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That’s why we’re committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy.

Gusto Design is hiring a Staff UX Researcher for our Horizontal Initiatives team. As a researcher on this team, you will report to Gloria Osardu, Gusto’s Head of Experience Research and Insights; yet partner closely as a strategic partner with Design, Product, Legal, Marketing, and Engineering across our multiple segments/teams in the organization. You will have the unique opportunity to lead research across the various life cycles of the product, services, and offerings we are building for the millions of employees who work for Gusto’s customers. You will create and own a research roadmap that aligns with stakeholders to drive key strategic decisions on teams. You will help the team connect business strategy with durable customer insights that create exceptional products our customers and internal teams love. Your impact will amplify our customer centricity and evolve the business & product strategy for Gusto as a whole.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Develop a strategic research roadmap to identify and answer the most critical questions about our customers in partnership with product, design, and cross-functional stakeholders. This will range from generative strategic research to more tactical evaluative research
• Synthesize/analyze data and findings, developing actionable insights, outputs and frameworks for both short term and long term research needs
• Design compelling and digestible deliverables, focused on storytelling and highlighting important insights for longevity
• Evaluate and experiment with new and emerging methods and technologies, and identify if/how to incorporate them into the team’s toolkit
• Work with our UX Research Operations team to identify opportunities & processes for teams to partner on and shape Gusto’s research practices from the ground up
• Collaborate closely with other research and user engagement functions (Data Science, Marketing, Customer Experience, and Sales) to identify leading-edge customer behaviors, attitudes, expectations, and values, and uncover new experience opportunities

Here’s what we're looking for:

• 10+ years of experience owning and leading user research projects and initiatives with demonstrated product/design impact via your research insights
• Practical experience with a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods, techniques for synthesis, and testing tools. You should be comfortable with survey design and analysis
• Demonstrated ability to make informed decisions about how and when to apply research methods based on solid understanding of their benefits and tradeoffs
• Embraces and thrives in a fast-paced, changing, potentially ambiguous but highly dynamic culture. Independent, proactive problem-solver who can adapt to changing priorities while staying in sync with multiple stakeholders
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with other researchers, designers, product managers, product marketers, and engineers
• Open to trying new ways of working and teaching the broader organization how to integrate research into our daily activities
• Excellent communication, presentation, interpersonal and analytical skills; the ability to communicate complex concepts clearly and persuasively across different audiences and varying levels of the organization
• Eagerness to continually learn, grow and improve the craft of research
• Genuine empathy for small business owners and employees and a deep desire to improve their lives.

Bonus points for:

• Practical UX Research experience in consumer, retail or B2B2C industries and/or regulated industries
• Experience with quantitative research with a good data analysis skill set
• In-house research experience on new and emerging technologies
• Human-centered Design, Human-computer Interaction, Design Thinking. Empathy Training.

Our cash compensation amount for this role is targeted at ~$180-205K in Denver & most remote locations, and ~$210-240K for San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including candidate experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home with us.

Our company is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Our company considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [email protected].