Senior Researcher – Human-Computer Interaction

Huawei Technologies Canada Co., Ltd.•Markham, ON

1d•CA$127,000 - CA$225,000

About The Position

Huawei Canada has an immediate 12-month contract opening for a Senior Researcher. The Huawei Human-Machine Interaction Lab unites global researchers, engineers, and designers to redefine human technology relationships through user centered, hands on research. We focus on agentic AI and multimodal interaction (voice, touch, vision, gesture) across smartphones, wearables, and emerging devices—advancing agentic workflows, multi-agent orchestration, and intuitive human-AI interfaces. By tightly integrating sensing, algorithms, and systems, our prototype driven work ships directly to products, enabling seamless task delegation and human AI collaboration at scale. This role will lead HCI and human-AI interaction research for next-generation intelligent products, with a focus on agentic AI, multimodal interfaces, and emerging device experiences. The researcher will frame ambiguous product and technology questions into clear research plans, hypotheses, study designs, success metrics, and actionable recommendations. They will conduct mixed-method research, including contextual inquiry, interviews, diary studies, usability testing, concept validation, survey research, log/behavioral analysis, controlled experiments, heuristic evaluation, and competitive/market analysis. The role involves evaluating how users understand, trust, control, recover from, and collaborate with AI systems across voice, touch, visual, gesture, and context-aware interactions. The researcher will partner with AI researchers, engineers, designers, and product managers to translate user insights into interaction models, product scenarios, prototypes, evaluation rubrics, and product-ready requirements. They will design and run studies for AI quality beyond traditional usability, including intent recognition, task completion, explain ability, controllability, confidence calibration, latency tolerance, error recovery, privacy expectations, accessibility, and perceived value. The role includes prototyping and testing new human-AI workflows, including conversational agents, copilots, proactive assistants, multimodal task delegation, cross-device handoff, and human-in-the-loop decision patterns. The researcher will synthesize research findings into crisp narratives, frameworks, journey maps, design principles, and prioritization guidance that influence product direction and technical roadmap decisions. They will also stay current with HCI, UX research, human-centered AI, multimodal interaction, and responsible AI practices; converting external trends into practical research questions, patents, publications, and product opportunities. The total target annual compensation (based on 2,080 hours per year) ranges from $127,000 - $225,000 depending on education, experience, and demonstrated expertise.

Requirements

Master's or PhD degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Human Factors, Computer Science, Information Science, Design Research, Interaction Design, or a related field; equivalent industry experience will also be considered.
6+ years of applied HCI, UX research, product research, or human-AI interaction research experience and demonstrated research leadership for Senior level.
Strong command of qualitative and quantitative research methods, with the judgment to choose pragmatic methods under time, product, and technical constraints.
Experience researching AI-powered products, voice assistants, copilots, recommendation systems, multimodal interfaces, AR/VR, mobile/wearable experiences, or other complex interactive systems.
Ability to evaluate intelligent systems where behavior is probabilistic, evolving, and context-dependent, and to define research metrics for trust, usefulness, reliability, transparency, and user control.
Working fluency with AI/ML concepts, including LLMs, multimodal models, agentic workflows, prompt behavior, model limitations, hallucination, personalization, privacy, and evaluation tradeoffs.
Strong storytelling and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to communicate evidence clearly to technical and non-technical audiences and drive alignment across research, design, engineering, and product.

Nice To Haves

Portfolio, publications, patents, or shipped product examples that demonstrate measurable impact on user experience, product strategy, interaction models, or human-centered AI systems are highly valued.
Familiarity with accessibility, inclusive research, privacy-sensitive research practices, research ethics, and responsible AI evaluation is a strong asset.

Responsibilities

Lead HCI and human-AI interaction research for next-generation intelligent products, with a focus on agentic AI, multimodal interfaces, and emerging device experiences.
Frame ambiguous product and technology questions into clear research plans, hypotheses, study designs, success metrics, and actionable recommendations.
Conduct mixed-method research, including contextual inquiry, interviews, diary studies, usability testing, concept validation, survey research, log/behavioral analysis, controlled experiments, heuristic evaluation, and competitive/market analysis.
Evaluate how users understand, trust, control, recover from, and collaborate with AI systems across voice, touch, visual, gesture, and context-aware interactions.
Partner with AI researchers, engineers, designers, and product managers to translate user insights into interaction models, product scenarios, prototypes, evaluation rubrics, and product-ready requirements.
Design and run studies for AI quality beyond traditional usability, including intent recognition, task completion, explain ability, controllability, confidence calibration, latency tolerance, error recovery, privacy expectations, accessibility, and perceived value.
Prototype and test new human-AI workflows, including conversational agents, copilots, proactive assistants, multimodal task delegation, cross-device handoff, and human-in-the-loop decision patterns.
Synthesize research findings into crisp narratives, frameworks, journey maps, design principles, and prioritization guidance that influence product direction and technical roadmap decisions.
Stay current with HCI, UX research, human-centered AI, multimodal interaction, and responsible AI practices; convert external trends into practical research questions, patents, publications, and product opportunities.