Principal UX Researcher

Bright Horizons•Newton, MA

10d•$145,000 - $154,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal UX Researcher will support planning, strategy and facilitation of UX research as part of an enterprise design team, supporting products across multiple products and business suites. This role is focused on driving qualitative research initiatives, establishing and managing research repository, and collaborating across product teams to support planning and facilitating all types of user research. Role will include discovery research interviews, card sorts, validation research, competitive analysis, quantitative surveys, usability studies, and elevating research analysis and insights into formal product recommendations and user stories. This role requires being inherently curious, detail-oriented, and self-directed. This role will collaborate directly with UX designers and product owners. This is a hybrid position requiring 3 days a week onsite at our headquarters in Newton, MA. Bright Horizons is a leading education and care company that helps employees thrive at work and at home by partnering with employers to offer high-quality child care, elder care, and educational support. Our workplace reflects this commitment—with collaborative environments, meaningful benefits, and a culture that supports both career growth and personal well-being. Whether you’re caring for children or powering the systems and partnerships that make it all possible, at Bright Horizons, you’re the difference.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree in UX Design, UX Research, Human Factors, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, Cognitive Science, HCI or other related degree
In lieu of a degree, an additional 3 years of experience may be considered
7 years of experience in UX Design
4-5 years of experience in UX Research, including planning and facilitating UX research interviews across multiple projects or workstreams

Nice To Haves

Previous working experience in UX Design, UX Strategy, Product Design or Product Marketing
Fluid with all aspects of UX design: stakeholder interviews and analysis, screener preparation, participant recruiting, Moderator guide creation, research survey preparation, research interview facilitation, research analysis and Executive Summary preparation
Experience working within an enterprise organization or large global brand
Experience supporting multiple product or business suites in parallel
Experience working with research platforms (GA4, UserInterviews.com, UserTesting.com)
Experience establishing and maintaining research repository
Comfortable incorporating AI into research workflows
Comfort planning and strategizing research efforts
Comfort facilitating and engaging with research participants
Excellent attention to detail, organization
Ability to manage multiple concurrent projects and deadlines
Strong communication skills
Experience working with agency partners or cross-functional teams is a plus

Responsibilities

Embracing UX design framework. Cultivating relationship between user objectives, needs, pain points and product solutions and how UX research informs design decisions and product strategies.
Defining, designing, and executing research efforts. Knowing which methodology to apply for different types of investigations. Drafting screeners and moderator guides, counseling product and design partners on best practices and approaches. Recruiting participants across audience segments. Prioritizing research goals, priority areas for questioning, and moderator guidance.
Setting up research interviews studies with target audiences in UserTesting.com. Facilitating one-on-one interviews, field observations and product feedback channels to examine user behaviors and workflows, uncover attitudes and pain points needs and barriers. Conduct large-scale foundational study across core audiences and support smaller quick turnaround research initiatives. Manage recorded transcripts and recorded video sessions and asynchronous surveys.
Using various frameworks to produce research analysis and reports. Produce high-quality insights and crafted user stories to inform user requirements. Leverage product analytics, customer feedback, support trends, and surveys to inform recommendations. Deliver recommendations to leadership and product teams and supporting share-outs and research insight transparency across the design team.
Develop and maintain a research roadmap aligned to business and product priorities. Establish and evolve UX research with best practices, templates, standards, and processes. Champion research rigor across methodology selection, execution, and reporting.
Collaborate with creative team to understand research needs, desired goals and manage planning, execution and testing opportunities. Translate business objectives into research questions and strategic learning agendas. Influence product strategy through evidence-based recommendations. Drive adoption of research insights throughout the product development lifecycle.
Cultivate and maintain a UX research repository with insights from past and future research efforts available in one place.
Establish and lead share outs of design research in collaborative forums inclusive of product, UX, development and marketing team partners. Facilitate research workshops and readouts.