User Researcher

Asana•New York, NY

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Experience Research team at Asana is on a mission to deeply understand the dynamics of modern work—how individuals collaborate, how teams operate, and how organizations scale. We partner with Product, Design, Engineering, and Go-to-Market teams to ensure every decision is grounded in a rich understanding of our customers. As a manager in our New York office, you will build a strategic talent engine, ensuring every researcher on your team is an influential partner in the product-shaping process. You'll be embedded with leadership in these fast-moving, high-visibility spaces—owning the roadmap from first principles and serving as the voice of the customer throughout the lifecycle. Joining our newly formed NYC team, you will be a key architect for Asana’s next generation of persona-packaged products—our bet on what the next $100M+ line of business looks like. In this role, you will work from first principles to help define new primitives, not just features. You will scale your impact by mentoring a high-velocity team, fostering a culture of rigorous curiosity and helping them navigate the messy transition from raw insights to architectural mandates. You will explore how teams plan, sequence, and ship work in an AI-native world, turning ambiguous problem spaces into sharp, opinionated workflows that feel fast, minimal, and “obviously right” to high-performing teams. This is a ground-floor opportunity to shape a new product category. You'll direct foundational and evaluative research across the full surface while building and managing Design Partner Groups, translating their feedback into actionable insights that directly inform strategy. If you thrive in ambiguity, care deeply about craft, and want your work to have an outsized business impact, this is the role. This role is based in our New York City office with an office-centric hybrid schedule. The standard in-office days are Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Most Asanas have the option to work from home on Wednesdays. Working from home on Fridays depends on the type of work you do, and your recruiter can share more about the in-office requirements.

Requirements

8+ years of experience practicing UX Research for digital products, with 2+ years of experience managing or mentoring a team of researchers in a fast-paced environment.
You don’t just execute a roadmap; you build a strategic talent engine. You have a track record of ensuring your team is an influential partner in the product-shaping process, moving beyond "service" research to architectural partnership.
You thrive in ambiguity and enjoy defining new product primitives from first principles. You are comfortable navigating the "messy" transition from raw foundational insights to sharp, opinionated product strategy.
You have deep expertise in a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methods, but you aren’t precious about the process. You have the experience to be "scrappy and crafty" when needed—knowing exactly how to lean on your intuition to navigate constraints and get to the right answer responsibly without a formal script.
You are deeply curious about how emerging technologies and AI are reshaping human mental models. You can translate complex shifts in user behavior into durable research frameworks that inform long-horizon innovation.
You are a persuasive communicator who builds high-trust relationships with Product, Design, and Engineering leadership. You enjoy "role-blending" to ensure the voice of the customer is the heartbeat of the development lifecycle.
You can connect the dots across disparate product areas, identifying cross-cutting themes that impact the broader business while maintaining a high bar for craft and rigor.

Responsibilities

Own the end-to-end UXR roadmap for your area, identifying and prioritizing research needs in partnership with Product, Design, and Engineering leadership
Lead foundational, generative, and evaluative research to ensure Asana is usable, desirable, and meets core user needs
Build and manage a Design Partner Group (DPG): recruit members, plan and execute ongoing feedback sessions and studies, create insights reports, and maintain program operations, including incentive tracking and member rotation
Drive future-looking research to understand the evolving developer landscape—including AI-native workflows, coding agents, role blending, and emerging tools—and translate those insights into strategic product recommendations
Partner closely with cross-functional teammates to inform pre- and post-launch strategy, synthesizing qualitative and quantitative learnings to shape beta, V1, V2, and beyond
Champion durable research frameworks as foundations for product thinking and innovation; elevate insights throughout the company to help teams understand impact and opportunity costs
Contribute UXR expertise across the Align pillar, partnering with teams working on Strategic Planning, Reporting Foundations, Command Center & Goals, and Executive Dashboards to deliver discovery research, evaluative studies, and strategic insights that inform product direction in these cross-cutting areas
Attend and contribute to design critiques and product reviews with a customer-empathy lens, rapidly applying learnings to identify issues and inform direction
Coach cross-functional partners on high-quality research practices and help non-researchers self-serve on foundational insights
Balance strategic, long-horizon research with tactical, just-in-time evaluative work in a fast-paced environment