Staff UX Researcher

About the team

Product Design at Gusto is made up of over 60 creative, collaborative people who care deeply about our mission to empower small businesses and their employees. We’re a cross-functional bunch focused on Design, Research, Writing, Ops and Front-end Development who are always looking for opportunities to build understanding and empathy for the people who use Gusto. We don’t care a whole lot about swim lanes and we work closely with our partners in Product, Engineering, Data, and Marketing to design, build and ship experiences that make a difference. We are passionate advocates for thoughtful, crafted, and inclusive experiences and we believe great design can make hard things possible, even delightful. Read more about Design at Gusto.

About the opportunity

We are hiring for two positions of Staff UX Researcher at Gusto! 

As a Staff Researcher, you will report to Gusto’s Head of UX Research and partner closely as a strategic partner with Product Design, Content Design, Product Managers, Data Science, Legal, Marketing, and Engineering across Gusto. 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 business owners and 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 the 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 lead research to 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 Design 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 with demonstrated impact on outcome.
• 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 a 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.

The ideal candidate should...

• Know user experience research methods and their application within startup environments.
• Be flexible, detail-oriented, and have an intrapreneurial ownership mentality.
• Have an excellent ability to communicate and collaborate with diverse teams.
• Be a champion of not only user experience research but also great product design.
• Have a genuine empathy for small business owners and employees and a deep desire to improve their lives.
• 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.

Bonus points for:

• Practical UX Research experience in consumer, retail or B2B2C industries and/or regulated industries.
• In-house research experience on new and emerging technologies.
• Human-centered Design, Human-computer Interaction, Design Thinking, Empathy Training. 

At Gusto, we strive to provide rewards that empower employees to achieve their financial and personal goals. We offer 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. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.