Researcher

IFG - International Financial Group; United States; On-site; USD 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

IFG - International Financial Group, through Viva Studios, seeks a senior UX researcher to guide product strategy with foundational research. You will collaborate with UX designers, product managers, data science, and engineering to address critical user needs and opportunities.

Ideal candidates have 5–7 years in UX research, strong interview and communication skills, and a track record of turning insights into product influence in enterprise settings.

Qualifications

• 5–7 years of UX research experience, with a focus on qualitative methods.
• Bachelor’s degree in HCI, psychology, UI engineering, or related social sciences.
• Experience conducting interviews, analyzing data, and distilling insights.
• Enterprise/B2B research experience preferred; Microsoft experience a bonus.
• Ability to influence product decisions through research findings.

Responsibilities

• Conduct B2B UX research across audiences: employees, People leaders, IT Admins, and HR pros.
• Drive diversity, equity, and inclusion in product decisions informed by research.
• Design, execute, and analyze research to deliver actionable results.
• Perform UX Health studies to ensure readiness for engineering release.
• Inform an engineering roadmap with qualitative and quantitative data.
• Communicate findings clearly to all levels of the product team with rationale.
• Collaborate across engineering, design, product, and data to maximize impact.

Skills

Interviews

Insight presentation

Insight distillation

Education

Bachelor's in HCI / related field

Job description

Compelling Story & Candidate Value Proposition

• What makes this role interesting? - This role provides the opportunity to do foundational research that would drive business strategy decisions for a product

Candidate Requirements

• Years of Experience Required: 5-7 overall years of experience in the field.
• Degrees or certifications required: Ideally, a degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is required to be eligible for this role. Other relevant degrees include psychology, UI engineering, or related social sciences degree
• Disqualifiers: A candidate would be automatically disqualified if they do not have 5 to 7 years of industry experience. Academic experience alone is not sufficient
• Best vs. Average: The ideal resume would contain 1) enterprise experience: experience working with B2B customers is critical 2) Previous Microsoft Experience: certainly a bonus, but not a requirement
• Performance Indicators: Performance will be assessed based on 1) output quality: the impact and quality of the research conducted 2) product influence: their ability to drive product influence based on the research findings

Top 3 Hard Skills Required + Years of Experience

1. Minimum 5-7 years experience with conducting interviews
2. Minimum 5-7 years experience with communication, specifically the ability to present insights effectively
3. Minimum 5-7 years experience with analysis and distilling insights for easy comprehension

Hard Skills Assessments

• Expected Dates that Hard Skills Assessments will be scheduled: asap.
• Hard Skills Assessment Process: The assessment process will include 1 HSA with sponsor and another 1 with another person
• Required Candidate Preparation: Candidates should have case studies prepared prior to the assessment, not mandatory but being able to discuss about case studies will be helpful.

The Viva Studios team is dedicated to revolutionizing employee engagement. In this role, you will leverage your skills in mixed methods research to guide near and long-term product experience investments. You will work closely with UX Designers, Product Managers, other User Researchers, data science, and engineering teams to ensure that we are addressing the most critical user needs and opportunities.

We are especially enthusiastic about candidates who want to learn, grow, and embody new ways of working. If you embrace growth mindset, have a record of accomplishment of delivering results, and you light up collaborating with other researchers, designers, product managers and engineers this is an awesome team to join.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct B2B UX research on one or all of the following types of audiences - individual employees, People leaders (execs, senior leaders, managers), IT Admins/Managers, Corporate Communicators and Human Resources Professionals.
• Drive research and UX practices that ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion in our product making decisions
• Design, execute, and analyze research to deliver insightful and actionable results.
• Perform ongoing UX Health studies to evaluate if design-built experiences are at the appropriate level for release to engineering.
• Continuously inform an engineering roadmap using customer data (qualitative and quantitative). Key to this accountability will be identifying gaps and customer pain points, as well as potential customer delighters.
• Communicate research findings in clear and compelling ways to all levels of the product team, with the ability to explain methodology, insights, and design recommendations.
• Land impact broadly from your customer-focused knowledge by working across engineering, design, product, and data disciplines.

Skills and experience:

Bachelor's Degree in HCI (human-computer interaction), market research, human factors, psychology, user experience design, behavioral science, or a related field with a strong emphasis on research techniques and understanding humans / designing technology to meet their needs, AND 5-7 years User Experience Research experience | OR equivalent experience.

Qualitative research experience to understand and build out user needs, jobs to be done, and challenges.

Evaluative research experience and UX Health research (e.g. Usability Testing, Concept Tests, Heuristic Reviews, Experience Reviews, etc.).

You are eager to learn and understand about user audiences, their behaviors, context(s) and motivations – across all phases of the customer lifecycle and user journey.

Can demonstrate strong empathy for these users while balancing the vision and constraints of stakeholder.

Experience working in a fast-paced environment that requires independent time management, task prioritization, and flexibility.

Track record of operating independently, embracing ambiguity, demonstrating creativity, being detail-oriented, and delivering results in a highly organized manner.

Experience building strong collaborative relationships with peers and stakeholders.

Must have excellent interpersonal skills. The ability to communicate with, and persuade, varied audiences and argue for results (both orally and in writing) is a plus.

Experience in digital platforms that support internal communications, collaboration, and employee engagement & experience at large enterprise companies is a plus!