Principal User Researcher

Circle; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 187,500 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity & Benefits

Discretionary vacation policy

Paid sick leave

Job summary

Circle is seeking a Principal User Researcher to enhance its research practice by understanding user needs and driving product strategy. This role involves collaboration with various teams to develop empathy and insights from users, ensuring product decisions are user-centered.

The ideal candidate will bring over ten years of user research experience, excellent collaborative skills, and a background in human behavior related fields. Circle offers a competitive salary and benefits, with a base pay range of $187,500 - $240,000.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of user research experience in an applied research setting or similar.
• Ability to navigate complex information.

Responsibilities

• Develop understanding of users' journeys and needs.
• Evangelize research in product decisions.
• Generate insights that shape product strategy.

Skills

User research experience

Storytelling

Collaboration

Data analysis

Trend identification

Education

Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in relevant field

Job description

Circle is a financial technology company at the epicenter of the emerging internet of money, where value can finally travel like other digital data — globally, nearly instantly and less expensively than legacy settlement systems. This ground-breaking new internet layer opens up previously unimaginable possibilities for payments, commerce and markets that can help raise global economic prosperity and enhance inclusion. Our infrastructure – including USDC, a blockchain-based dollar – helps businesses, institutions and developers harness these breakthroughs and capitalize on this major turning point in the evolution of money and technology.

What you’ll be part of

Circle is committed to visibility and stability in everything we do. As we grow as an organization, we're expanding into some of the world's strongest jurisdictions. Speed and efficiency are motivators for our success and our employees live by our company values: Multistakeholder, Mindfulness, Driven by Excellence and High Integrity. Circlers are consistently evolving in a remote world where strength in numbers fuels team success. We have built a flexible and diverse work environment where new ideas are encouraged and everyone is a stakeholder.

What you’ll be responsible for

Circle is growing its research practice and looking for a Principal User Researcher to deeply understand the people who will use our products and glean insights to drive product direction and strategy. You’ll help paint a full picture of our users and their needs through strong partnerships with product management, design, engineering, data science, product marketing, and customer support. You’ll own research strategy and related activities, guide our solutions to help thousands of businesses to delight millions of end‑users around the world.

What you’ll work on

• Developing an understanding of people, their journeys, and their needs in the rapidly changing web 3, crypto and blockchain problem space.
• Building our user research culture; Evangelizing research as a core tenet in product decisions and how we build products.
• Collaborating across many teams at Circle to marry qualitative and quantitative data, providing a vision of users needs.
• Generate insights that shape how product teams think about medium and long‑term product strategy.
• Crafting and elevating narratives to build empathy so the user is always in mind when decisions are made throughout the organization.
• Acting as a thought leader in the domain of research, while advocating for the people who could use our products.
• Contributing to a growing UX org, helping install best practices and processes as we scale, and filling out our product squads’ research toolbox with methodologies.

You will aspire to our four core values

• Multistakeholder - you have dedication and commitment to our customers, shareholders, employees, and families and local communities.
• Mindful - you seek to be respectful, an active listener and to pay attention to detail.
• Driven by Excellence - you are driven by our mission and our passion for customer success which means you relentlessly pursue excellence, that you do not tolerate mediocrity and you work intensely to achieve your goals.
• High Integrity - you seek open and honest communication, and you hold yourself to very high moral and ethical standards. You reject manipulation, dishonesty, and intolerance.

What you’ll bring to Circle

• 10+ years of user research experience in an applied research setting, or similar
• Understand trends and issues shaping the future of the industry to drive and contribute to the future vision
• Proactively identify opportunities for research and own the execution
• Evangelize user needs to align key stakeholders
• Impact and drive roadmaps by articulating key people's needs. Identify new opportunity spaces.
• Navigate complex information and adapt to a changing environment
• Lead across cross‑functional stakeholders to drive business impact
• Evangelize research results across cross‑functional stakeholders via storytelling to land desirable product directions
• Experience in solving and simplifying service design challenges for complex task‑based workflows
• Research mentorship and guidance for fellow researchers, designers, and product management peers
• Contribute to new ways of doing research
• Bachelors, Masters, or PhD in human behavior related fields (Computer Science, HCI, Experimental Psychology, Sociology, Information Science, Economics, Political Science, Mathematics, etc.).

Additional Information

• This position is eligible for day‑one PERM sponsorship for qualified candidates.

Circle is on a mission to create an inclusive financial future, with transparency at our core. We consider a wide variety of elements when crafting our compensation ranges and total compensation packages.

Starting pay is determined by various factors, including but not limited to: relevant experience, skill set, qualifications, and other business and organizational needs. Please note that compensation ranges may differ for candidates in other locations.

Base Pay Range: $187,500 - $240,000

Annual Bonus Target: 17.5%

Also Included: Equity & Benefits (including medical, dental, vision and 401(k)). Circle has a discretionary vacation policy. We also provide 10 days of paid sick leave per year and 11 paid holidays per year in the U.S.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at Circle. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Additionally, Circle participates in E-Verify Program in certain locations, as required by law.

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