Principal UX Researcher, AI Experiences

Microsoft • Redmond, WA

16h • $142,800 - $304,200

About The Position

Microsoft is seeking a Principal UX Researcher to lead mixed-methods research for Copilot Cowork, an AI experience in which people delegate multi-step tasks and expect completed work. The researcher will investigate who uses Cowork, what they use it for, which capabilities matter, where the experience breaks down, and what drives repeat use. This hands-on individual-contributor role combines quantitative research—including surveys, behavioral data, and experiments—with qualitative research to identify user needs and friction. The role also contributes to agentic evaluations comparing Cowork with competing agents on representative delegated work, and has broad influence across Product, Design, Engineering, and Data Science.

Success in the first year includes providing teams with evidence about Cowork users, use cases, retention, and drop-off; establishing a prioritized, sized map of unmet needs and friction and measuring improvements to top issues; creating an experience benchmark that tracks survey and behavioral metrics across releases; and running regular, realistic agentic evaluations whose competitive results inform the quality roadmap.

Employees in AI Experiences who live within a 50-mile commute of a designated Microsoft Hub in the U.S. are expected to work from the office at least four days per week. This expectation is subject to local law and may vary by jurisdiction.

Requirements

• Doctorate in a listed or related field and 3+ years of User Experience Research experience; OR a master's degree in a listed or related field and 4+ years; OR a bachelor's degree in a listed or related field and 6+ years; OR equivalent experience.
• Listed fields include Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, and Social Sciences.
• Strong mixed-methods research skills, including quantitative survey design and sampling, experimental design, and statistical modeling, as well as qualitative interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing, and synthesis.
• Hands-on proficiency in R or Python, plus SQL or KQL, for analyzing survey, evaluation, and telemetry data.
• Ability to influence across functions and with senior leaders, communicate difficult findings, and resolve competing priorities.

Nice To Haves

• Bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Statistics, Human Factors, Anthropology, or a related field and 8+ years of user research experience; OR a master's degree in a related field and 6+ years; OR a doctorate in a related field and 5+ years; OR equivalent experience.
• Experience researching AI-powered products, ideally products that take actions or produce work on a user's behalf.
• A track record of research shaping product strategy and shipped experiences in ambiguous spaces, including generative research that uncovered new opportunities.
• Experience with statistical modeling such as regression, mixed-effects models, segmentation, and driver analysis.

Responsibilities

• Combine telemetry, surveys, and interviews to understand who uses Cowork, the tasks they use it for, how usage changes over time, and what distinguishes returning users from those who leave after one use.
• Lead generative research, including contextual inquiry, diary studies, and in-depth interviews with knowledge workers, to identify jobs Cowork could own, expected capabilities, and future product direction.
• Identify and quantify friction in discovering Cowork, moving from chat into a task, delegating work, following progress, reviewing outputs, and recovering from mistakes; help teams prioritize fixes by prevalence and cost.
• Measure how well Cowork capabilities meet expectations in real workflows and identify capability gaps that limit trust, adoption, and repeat use.
• Partner with Design and Product on concepts, prototypes, and usability studies; establish an experience benchmark using attitudinal and behavioral metrics and assess whether shipped changes improve outcomes.
• Contribute to interactive side-by-side evaluations in which users complete representative tasks in Cowork and competing agents; help design task sets, rubrics, and analysis plans, and translate evaluation losses into prioritized quality-roadmap fixes.
• Design surveys and experiments with sound sampling and adequate statistical power; segment users, model drivers of satisfaction and retention, connect reported experiences with observed behavior, and use AI-assisted analysis where useful.
• Set the Cowork research agenda with partners, influence roadmap and quality decisions with senior leaders, communicate uncertainty and tradeoffs clearly, mentor researchers, and strengthen the team's mixed-methods and evaluation craft while remaining hands-on.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal