Lead User Experience Researcher

Scotiabank; Toronto; On-site; CAD 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Diversity & Inclusion

Tuition assistance

Flexible rewards

Community engagement programs

Job summary

Scotiabank in Toronto, Canada, seeks a Lead UX Researcher to drive discovery across digital and business teams. You will connect client needs to journeys and products, framing the right questions and translating evidence into strategic UX choices.

You will partner with executives, designers, and product teams to design bespoke research plans, manage an enablement program, and evolve the research practice to deliver impactful outcomes.

Qualifications

• Minimum 7+ years in UX research, design research, service design, or related insight roles.
• Experience in financial services or regulated environments preferred.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders and drive action through research.

Responsibilities

• Lead discovery research for ambiguous challenges, framing through synthesis and activation.
• Use systems thinking to connect client needs, journeys, products, channels, and organizational factors.
• Design fit-for-purpose research using qualitative, quantitative, participatory methods as needed.
• Partner with executives and stakeholders to clarify questions and align research to decisions.
• Translate evidence into clear insights, opportunities, and recommendations shaping UX strategy.
• Facilitate internal workshops to prioritize directions and communicate findings with evidence limits.
• Build and influence research roadmaps and connect client evidence to business outcomes.
• Advance the maturity of the research practice with evolving methods and governance.
• Administer research tools, templates, and repositories to enable reuse and connection.
• Own the AI layer of the practice with governed outputs and trust safeguards.
• Build and run enablement programs: curriculum, templates, coaching for design and product partners.

Skills

UX research

Discovery research

Stakeholder influence

Recruitment

Facilitation

Systems thinking

Storytelling

Research tools

Job description

Requisition ID: 275460
Join a purpose driven winning team, committed to results, in an inclusive and high-performing culture.

The Role:

The Lead User Experience (UX) Researcher helps digital and business teams understand clients, uncover opportunities, and make confident experience decisions. You will both drive efficiency across our research practice, as well as lead discovery research for ambiguous, open-ended challenges, connecting evidence across journeys, products, and client needs. You will partner with executives, stakeholders, designers, and product teams to frame the right questions, translate evidence into clear implications.

Is this role right for you? In this role you will:

Strategic Discovery & Research

• Lead discovery research for holistic, ambiguous, or open-ended challenges, from framing through synthesis and activation.
• Use systems thinking to connect client needs, journeys, products, channels, and organizational factors.
• Design fit-for-purpose research, combining qualitative, quantitative, participatory, or innovative methods as needed.
• Proactively partner with executives and stakeholders to clarify questions, challenge assumptions, and align research to decisions.
• Turn complex evidence into clear insights, opportunity spaces, and recommendations that shape UX strategy and priorities.
• Facilitate internal workshops to extract priorities, align on direction and client 'so-what' and communicate findings with clarity, confidence, and appropriate evidence limitations.
• Build and influence research roadmaps, helping teams prioritize the highest-value questions.
• Connect client evidence to business outcomes, investment decisions, and strategic priorities.
• Advance the maturity of the research practice by evolving methods, standards, governance, and ways of working.

Research Enablement

• Administer research tools, templates, and repositories so evidence is easy to capture, find, reuse, and connect across and beyond the UXR team
• Own the AI layer of the practice. Assisted synthesis and search across a governed evidence corpus, with the guardrails and quality checks that keep the outputs trustworthy rather than merely fast.
• Build and run the enablement programme: curriculum, templates, coaching that let designers and product partners run sound research to our standard and with our review, extending capacity without extending headcount.

Do you have the skills that will enable you to succeed in this role? We'd love to work with you if you have:

• 7+ years of experience in UX research, design research, service design, or an adjacent insight or strategy role.
• Experience in financial services, regulated industries, or adjacent complex service environments is preferred.
• Demonstrated success leading discovery research for complex or ambiguous questions and translating evidence into strategic direction.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders, shape strategic decisions, and drive action through research.
• Hands-on experience with recruitment, incentives, research tools, repositories, surveys, and research reporting.
• Strong systems thinking, synthesis, facilitation, storytelling, and stakeholder partnership skills.
• A growth mindset, proactive approach, and strategic outlook, with the curiosity and confidence to navigate uncertainty and improve how research gets done.

What's in it for you?

• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Allyship - We strive to create an inclusive culture where every employee is empowered to reach their fullest potential, respected for who they are, and are embraced through bias-free practices and inclusive values across Scotiabank.
• We embrace diversity and provide opportunities for all employees to learn, grow & participate through our various Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that span across diverse gender identities, ethnicity, race, age, ability & veterans.
• Accessibility and Workplace Accommodations - We value the unique skills and experiences each individual brings to the Bank and are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible environment for everyone. Scotiabank continues to locate, remove and prevent barriers so that we can build a diverse and inclusive environment while meeting accessibility requirements.
• Upskilling through online courses, cross-functional development opportunities, and tuition assistance.
• Competitive Rewards program including bonus, flexible vacation, personal, sick days and benefits will start on day one.
• Community Engagement - no matter where you choose to work from; we offer opportunities for community engagement & belonging with our various programs such as hackathons, contests, Humans of Digital and much more!

Location(s): Canada : Ontario : Toronto

Scotiabank is a leading bank in the Americas. Guided by our purpose: "for every future", we help our customers, their families and their communities achieve success through a broad range of advice, products and services, including personal and commercial banking, wealth management and private banking, corporate and investment banking, and capital markets.

At Scotiabank, we value the unique skills and experiences each individual brings to the Bank, and are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible environment for everyone. If you require accommodation (including, but not limited to, an accessible interview site, alternate format documents, ASL Interpreter, or Assistive Technology) during the recruitment and selection process, please let our Recruitment team know. We thank all applicants for their interest in a career at Scotiabank; however, only those candidates who are selected for an interview will be contacted.