Head of User Research

AfterShip

7d•Remote

About The Position

We are seeking a Head of User Research to build our research function, blend market and design research, and turn insight into decisions that shape strategy, product experience, pricing, and go-to-market. You will report to the CPO and work closely with teams in North America and Asia. You’ll partner with Product Marketing, Product Management, and Design. The scope spans market research, strategic research, large-scale redesign, and enabling PMs and Designers to self-serve for concept/design validation.

Requirements

10+ years in user research or customer insights with leadership experience in complex B2B or B2B2C products.
Depth across mixed methods (foundational and evaluative) including discovery, usability, journey mapping, card sorting, and tree testing.
Proven track record of translating insights into measurable product and business outcomes—particularly for design systems, onboarding, and market expansion.
Skilled in partnering with Product Analytics to connect what is happening (quant) to why it’s happening (qual).
Experienced in enabling global teams to conduct effective studies across geographies and languages.
Strong communication and stakeholder management skills; able to drive alignment across executive and functional teams.
Capable of managing both quantitative and qualitative research, including internal validation and external market studies.

Nice To Haves

Experience in eCommerce, logistics, shipping, or post-purchase journeys.
Background supporting pricing and packaging research for subscription products.
Fluent in Mandarin Chinese.

Responsibilities

Build and lead the research function - Stand up a lean, high-impact team; hire and mentor senior researchers; set up tools, processes, and infrastructure to scale research globally.
Create a unified customer understanding framework - Align Product, Design, and Product Marketing on customer needs and segments to guide decisions across SMB to Enterprise.
Drive strategic insight for big bets - Partner with Product and PMM on discovery and zero-to-one validation; translate findings into multi-year strategy and roadmap choices.
Reimagine the product experience - Elevate onboarding, activation, and post-purchase experiences through structured research (e.g., card sorting, tree testing) that leads to actionable recommendations.
Accelerate activation and onboarding - Combine research and analytics to identify funnel drop-offs, generate hypotheses, and run rapid evaluative studies.
Operationalize continuous feedback - Build VoC and NPS programs; create an insights library and maintain ongoing customer touchpoints with clear incentives.
Enable self-serve research - Provide templates, guides, and playbooks so PMs and Designers can run lightweight validation across time zones and languages.
Inform pricing and packaging decisions - Lead research to validate pricing and packaging redesigns, ensuring insights drive business outcomes.