Senior UX Researcher

Fanatics Inc•Los Angeles, CA

42d•$140,000 - $193,000

About The Position

Fanatics Collectibles is reshaping the sports trading card and collectibles industry. From planning and design through manufacturing and distribution, we connect passionate collectors and partners to the products they love. Backed by Fanatics Inc. (valued at $31B) with exclusive licensing deals across MLB, NFL, NBA, and more, we are building the next generation of systems, tools, and experiences that power this complex global business. We're seeking a Senior UX Researcher to lead research into the systems, stakeholders, and processes that power how sports trading cards are planned, designed, manufactured, and sold. This role will not only uncover pain points but also map opportunities across one of the most intricate ecosystems in collectibles. The focus will be on internal stakeholders - from design and product teams to operations, supply chain, and business partners. You will partner with product managers and designers to identify the right problems to solve, validate potential solutions, and inform the design of tools and systems that make our business run more smoothly at scale. This is a foundational hire: an opportunity to bring service design and systems thinking into our research practice, and help define how research supports the evolution of our end-to-end business infrastructure.

Requirements

You thrive on making sense of complexity and ambiguity.
You bring expertise in service design and systems thinking, with experience applying these in real-world contexts.
You've led research in operational or enterprise settings (manufacturing, supply chain, B2B tools, or other complex ecosystems).
You are fluent in both strategic discovery (framing problems, mapping systems) and tactical evaluation (testing concepts, validating solutions).
You're skilled in facilitating cross-functional workshops and building shared understanding.
You care deeply about empowering teams, not just delivering insights.

Responsibilities

Lead deep-dive research into the end-to-end lifecycle of sports trading cards - planning, design, manufacturing, distribution, and sales.
Map internal processes, stakeholders, roles, and pain points to identify where systems and tools can create the most impact.
Collaborate with product managers to frame the right problems and validate solution spaces.
Apply service design and system design methods to clarify complex workflows and dependencies.
Develop journey maps, service blueprints, and stakeholder diagrams to create shared visibility across teams.
Translate findings into actionable frameworks that guide product and operations strategy.
Conduct interviews, workshops, contextual inquiries, and observational research with internal stakeholders.
Use mixed methods to synthesize insights, balancing qualitative depth with quantitative validation.
Create artifacts (maps, frameworks, narratives) that clarify complexity and inspire confidence in decision-making.
Partner with product, design, engineering, and operations to ensure insights translate into action.
Facilitate workshops to align stakeholders and build consensus around priorities.
Evangelize research through clear storytelling, ensuring leaders and teams see themselves in the insights.