Senior UX Researcher

SOVRA

5d•Remote

About The Position

The Senior UX Researcher will build a continuous research practice across SOVRA’s buyer products as the company develops an AI-native platform. The role ensures product and design decisions are grounded in the needs of public procurement buyers, evaluators, contract managers, and suppliers. It combines establishing research practices and operations with personally conducting generative and evaluative research, including accessibility research and studies of how users check and correct AI features. Findings inform roadmap decisions across SOVRA’s product suite and are kept traceable to participant input and behavior. The researcher will work across Product, Design, Customer Experience, and Data. The role includes planning research with product leaders, establishing protocols and an insight library, maintaining regular contact with agency buyers and suppliers, and influencing product decisions through evidence and facilitation. Travel within North America is expected approximately 20% of the time.

Requirements

At least 7 years of UX research experience in enterprise SaaS or complex B2B environments.
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
Experience building or formalizing a research practice, including research operations, participant recruitment, and an insight repository.
Experience in regulated or compliance-heavy domains such as government technology, healthcare, or finance.
A record of research influencing product and design decisions, and ability to influence product, design, and engineering without authority while translating findings into clear recommendations.
Command of qualitative and quantitative methods and judgment about when to use each.
Experience mentoring researchers and raising research quality across a team.
Daily practical use of AI in research, with sound judgment about accuracy, bias, and participant privacy.
Authorization to work in the United States; the employer cannot sponsor work visas or transfers.

Nice To Haves

Research with public-sector users, or with procurement, ERP, or financial systems.
Usability testing with people with disabilities and assistive technology.
Experience with research and call-insight tools such as Dovetail and Gong, and product analytics tools such as PostHog.

Responsibilities

Plan a quarterly research agenda with product leaders, tied to important roadmap decisions across the product suite.
Establish research protocols, templates, consent processes, participant recruitment, and a searchable insight library.
Lead generative and evaluative studies, including contextual inquiry, interviews, journey mapping, usability testing, and surveys across complex procurement workflows.
Partner with the Data team to combine behavioral data with customer feedback and define success measures that inform product direction.
Maintain regular contact with agency buyers and suppliers through design partners, customer groups, and community sessions.
Travel within North America, approximately 20% of the time, for agency site visits, contextual inquiry, user groups, planning sessions, and one or two industry events annually.
Bring research evidence to roadmap, design, and executive conversations, and facilitate workshops and co-design sessions that turn findings into decisions.
Coach product managers, designers, and researchers to plan and conduct sound research.
Make research accessible by default, including people with disabilities and assistive-technology users, and help teams design to WCAG 2.2 AA and ADA.
Study how buyers trust, check, and correct AI features, and help determine where a person remains in control.
Use AI to accelerate synthesis, tagging, and analysis while keeping insights traceable to participant input and behavior.