Lead UX Researcher, AI & Digital Experiences

Leadout Capital; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Salesforce in San Francisco seeks a Lead User Researcher to own research across agentic experiences and event technology. You will guide research strategy, plan projects end-to-end, and synthesize qualitative and quantitative data to inform product direction.

You will work across in-person, virtual, and on-demand events, shaping digital marketing experiences, with travel roughly four to five times per year for onsite research at Salesforce events. Strong communication and mentoring are essential.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in qualitative research with strong fluency in quantitative methods.
• Ability to plan, design, execute, analyze, and communicate multiple research types.
• Comfort traveling ~4–5 times/year for onsite Salesforce events.
• Proven impact on product strategy, roadmaps and measurable outcomes.
• Experience connecting research to digital marketing experiences and channels.
• Familiarity with survey data, analytics, and experimentation alongside qualitative evidence.
• Proven AI fluency and ability to design AI-assisted research workflows.

Responsibilities

• Shape Research Strategy and identify emerging needs across the digital marketing portfolio.
• Independently scope and plan projects end to end with clear milestones and risks.
• Translate business questions into strategic research plans and adjust as needed.
• Combine qualitative and quantitative methods to deliver a complete data picture.
• Define audiences, recruitment criteria, and ensure data quality and representativeness.
• Synthesize evidence from research, analytics, and industry studies to identify patterns.
• Build deep understanding of customer and employee needs across channels and journeys.
• Advance agentic experiences research, including AI autonomy, transparency, and control.
• Establish customer-centered measures of usefulness, trust, and performance for AI-powered experiences.
• Conduct foundational and evaluative research across in-person, virtual, and on-demand event experiences.
• Translate evidence into recommendations, measurement frameworks, and future-state direction.
• Create narratives and visualizations; present to product teams and executives; run workshops.
• Advance research methods, reusable tools, and responsible AI practices; mentor others.

Skills

Qualitative research

Quantitative analysis

Research strategy

AI fluency

Communication

Mentoring

Job description

Join Salesforce’s Digital User Research team, part of Digital Marketing Technology. We deliver objective, actionable insights that shape customer-facing experiences and internal tools across Salesforce’s digital marketing portfolio, including websites and digital destinations, email and messaging, in-person and virtual events, and marketing-focused agentic experiences.

As Lead User Researcher, you will own research across two of the team's most strategic areas: agentic experiences and event technology. You will help teams understand emerging mental models, unmet needs, friction, trust, and where people need transparency, control, guidance, or human support. You will also lead research that improves the digital experiences supporting Salesforce events across in-person, virtual, and on-demand formats.

We are seeking a curious, experienced researcher who knows how to select and combine methods such as interviews, usability testing, surveys, and behavioral data analysis to answer complex questions. You will lead research across multiple products and stakeholder groups, develop strategy across a portfolio of projects, build alignment around the research questions and opportunities that matter most, and communicate insights that influence product strategy and experience decisions.

What You'll Do

• Shape Research Strategy by proactively identify emerging research needs, surface gaps and opportunities, and provide a clear, evidence-based point of view to inform research priorities across the digital marketing portfolio.
• Independently scope and plan multiple projects end to end, defining the decisions to inform, milestones, dependencies, audiences, methods, risks, and measures of success.
• Translate ambiguous business and product questions into strategic and tactical research plans, reframing the opportunity and adjusting the approach as the evidence and business context evolve.
• Creatively combine qualitative and quantitative methods to overcome constraints and deliver a more complete picture of the data. Methods may include interviews, contextual inquiry, jobs-to-be-done research, concept evaluation, usability testing, task studies, surveys, benchmarking, and experimentation.
• Define credible audiences and recruitment criteria, protect data quality, and ensure findings appropriately represent the people and contexts the product is intended to serve.
• Connect evidence across sources by synthesizing user research, analytics, experimentation, and industry research to identify patterns, communicate confidence and limitations, and deliver a more complete understanding of the user experience.
• Build a deep understanding of customer and employee needs, digital behaviors, marketing goals, and evolving technologies to uncover opportunities across channels, journeys, audiences, and connected digital experiences.
• Advance agentic experience research. Study how people understand, trust, and engage with AI agents, including expectations for autonomy, transparency, control, personalization, human oversight, failure recovery, and escalation.
• Establish customer-centered measures of usefulness, task success, quality, trust, adoption,and agent performance across connected AI-powered experiences.
• Conduct foundational and evaluative research across Salesforce’s in-person, virtual, and on-demand event experiences, including onsite observation, intercept interviews, surveys, and usability testing.
• Translate evidence into clear recommendations, strategic guidance, measurement frameworks, and future-state direction that shape digital strategies, experience roadmaps, requirements, and experiments.
• Create compelling narratives and data visualizations, present to audiences ranging from product teams to executives, and lead workshops that turn research findings into aligned decisions and follow-up actions.
• Advance research methods, reusable tools, measurement standards, and responsible uses of AI; mentor others, and champion inclusive and accessible research.

What We're Looking For

• Deep expertise in qualitative research and strong fluency in quantitative methods, with excellent judgment about research questions, method selection, audience recruitment, evidence quality, and maintaining methodological rigor across research of varying scope and pace.
• Ability to plan, design, execute, analyze, and communicate foundational, generative, evaluative, and measurement research at both strategic and tactical levels.
• Comfortable conducting research in fast-paced, live event environments and are willing and able to travel approximately four to five times per year to support onsite research at Salesforce events.
• A record of proactively identifying high-value research opportunities and influencing product strategy, roadmaps, requirements, designs, and measurable business outcomes.
• Strong understanding of digital marketing experiences and the ability to connect research evidence to customer and employee needs, business goals, channel strategies, technical considerations, and potential implications across the broader digital portfolio.
• Working knowledge of basic statistical concepts and behavioral data, with the ability to interpret and integrate survey findings, digital analytics, and experimentation results alongside qualitative evidence while clearly communicating limitations.
• Demonstrated AI fluency and experience building AI-assisted research workflows, with sound judgment about where AI adds value, where human expertise is essential, and how to prevent speed or automation from distorting a finding.
• Strong facilitation, storytelling, and communication skills, with experience tailoring evidence and recommendations for product teams, cross-functional leaders, and executive audiences.
• Experience strengthening a research practice through mentoring, reusable frameworks, enablement and research knowledge systems.
• Ability to deliver high-quality work in a fast-moving environment with constrained timelines and collaborate effectively across globally distributed teams and time zones.
• A commitment to responsible, ethical, and inclusive research, particularly in rapidly evolving AI contexts.