Principal UX Researcher

brighthorizons; Newton (MA); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Bright Horizons, Newton, MA, seeks a Principal UX Researcher to oversee planning, strategy, and facilitation of UX research across multiple products. You will drive qualitative research initiatives, establish and manage a research repository, and collaborate with product teams to support planning and generate actionable insights.

This hybrid role requires three days onsite weekly at our Newton headquarters and a strong track record in research leadership within large organizations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in UX Design, UX Research, Human Factors, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, Cognitive Science, HCI or related field.
• 7 years of experience in UX Design.
• 4-5 years of experience in UX Research across multiple projects/workstreams.

Responsibilities

• Plan and facilitate qualitative and quantitative UX studies across products.
• Define research plans, recruit participants, and manage moderator guides.
• Capture insights and translate into user stories and product requirements.
• Develop and maintain a UX research repository for accessibility and reuse.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration with designers and product owners.
• Champion rigorous research practices across the design organization.

Skills

UX Research

Research Planning

Research Facilitation

Research Analysis

Stakeholder Management

UX Strategy

Education

Bachelor's degree in UX Design/UX Research/Human Factors or related field

Tools

UserTesting

GA4

Job description

Primary Purpose

The Principal UX Researcher will support planning, strategy and facilitation of UX research as part of an enterprise design team, supporting products across multiple products and business suites. This role is focused on driving qualitative research initiatives, establishing and managing research repository, and collaborating across product teams to support planning and facilitating all types of user research. Role will include discovery research interviews, card sorts, validation research, competitive analysis, quantitative surveys, usability studies, and elevating research analysis and insights into formal product recommendations and user stories. This role requires being inherently curious, detail-oriented, and self-directed. This role will collaborate directly with UX designers and product owners.

This is a hybrid position requiring 3 days a week onsite at our headquarters in Newton, MA.

Bright Horizons is a leading education and care company that helps employees thrive at work and at home by partnering with employers to offer high-quality child care, elder care, and educational support. Our workplace reflects this commitment-with collaborative environments, meaningful benefits, and a culture that supports both career growth and personal well-being. Whether you're caring for children or powering the systems and partnerships that make it all possible, at Bright Horizons, you're the difference.

Essential Functions/Responsibilities

• User Centered Design : Embracing UX design framework. Cultivating relationship between user objectives, needs, pain points and product solutions and how UX research informs design decisions and product strategies.
• Research Planning: Defining, designing, and executing research efforts. Knowing which methodology to apply for different types of investigations. Drafting screeners and moderator guides, counseling product and design partners on best practices and approaches. Recruiting participants across audience segments. Prioritizing research goals, priority areas for questioning, and moderator guidance.
• Research Facilitation : Setting up research interviews studies with target audiences in UserTesting.com. Facilitating one-on-one interviews, field observations and product feedback channels to examine user behaviors and workflows, uncover attitudes and pain points needs and barriers. Conduct large-scale foundational study across core audiences and support smaller quick turnaround research initiatives. Manage recorded transcripts and recorded video sessions and asynchronous surveys.
• Research Analysis : Using various frameworks to produce research analysis and reports. Produce high-quality insights and crafted user stories to inform user requirements. Leveraging product analytics, customer feedback, support trends, and surveys to inform recommendations. Deliver recommendations to leadership and product teams and supporting share-outs and research insight transparency across the design team.
• Strategic Leadership: Develop and maintain a research roadmap aligned to business and product priorities. Establish and evolve UX research with best practices, templates, standards, and processes. Champion research rigor across methodology selection, execution, and reporting.
• Stakeholder Management: Collaborate with creative team to understand research needs, desired goals and manage planning, execution and testing opportunities. Translate business objectives into research questions and strategic learning agendas. Influence product strategy through evidence-based recommendations. Drive adoption of research insights throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Research Repository: Cultivate and maintain a UX research repository with insights from past and future research efforts available in one place.
• Research Forum: Establish and lead share offs of design research in collaborative forums inclusive of product, UX, development and marketing team partners. Facilitate research workshops and readouts.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in UX Design, UX Research, Human Factors, Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology, Cognitive Science, HCI or other related degree In lieu of a degree, an additional 3 years of experience may be considered
• 7 years of experience in UX Design
• 4-5 years of experience in UX Research, including planning and facilitating UX research interviews across multiple projects or workstreams

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous working experience in UX Design, UX Strategy, Product Design or Product Marketing
• Fluid with all aspects of UX design: stakeholder interviews and analysis, screener preparation, participant recruiting, Moderator guide creation, research survey preparation, research interview facilitation, research analysis and Executive Summary preparation
• Experience working within an enterprise organization or large global brand
• Experience supporting multiple product or business suites in parallel
• Experience working with research platforms (GA4, UserInterv