User Researcher, AI Evaluations

Notion; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 196,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Notion is seeking an experienced UX Researcher based in either San Francisco or New York City. This role focuses on evaluating AI-powered experiences, ensuring quality through defined evaluation criteria and user insights. The successful candidate will work closely with product, design, engineering, and data science teams to improve AI interactions.

Competitive salary range for this position is between $196,000 and $230,000 annually, reflecting Notion's commitment to hiring talented individuals.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of UX research experience in the industry.
• Experience evaluating AI-enabled products and working with Data Science/ML partners.
• Capability to create reusable evaluation frameworks based on user insights.

Responsibilities

• Define reusable evaluation criteria reflecting real user expectations.
• Conduct longitudinal and feature-specific surveys to measure experience quality.
• Ensure evaluations reflect user intent and the full interaction journey.
• Uncover breakdowns and recovery behaviors across the system.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams on evaluation processes.

Skills

Operationalize insight into measurement

AI fluency and systems thinking

Clear communication and impact orientation

Strong UX research craft (quant + qual)

Pragmatism in fast-moving environments

Education

Master's or Ph.D. in HCI, Psychology, Behavioral Science, or related field

Tools

Dovetail

SQL

Python

R

Job description

Who We Are

Notion is the collaborative AI workspace where teams and agents think together. We’re building one place where your knowledge, projects, meetings, and AI tools live side by side so work is faster, clearer, and less fragmented. Millions of individuals, small teams, and large companies run their work on Notion.

Notinos (our employees) are customer zero in bringing this future of work to life. We care about craft, building things that last, and the belief that great work is still fundamentally human. Our goal isn’t to ship the next feature. Each and every team of Notinos is working to set the standard for how humans work together in the AI era. From building a business’s system of record to making and managing AI agents to automating away the busy work, we care deeply about giving our customers more time for their life’s work.

About The Role

We’re seeking an experienced UX Researcher to define and scale how we evaluate Notion’s AI‑powered experiences—focusing on what “good” looks like not only for model output quality, but for the end‑to‑end product experience where people discover, set goals, delegate work, review results, and build trust over time with AI.

This role sits at the intersection of research craft and evaluation operations. You’ll run studies that uncover user mental models, expectations, and failure/recovery behaviors, then translate those insights into reusable rubrics, workflows, and measurement approaches that product, design, engineering, and data science can apply consistently.

This role can be based in either San Francisco or New York City. We work from our offices on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays (our Anchor Days) because we do our best thinking and building together in person. We’re looking for someone who’s excited to work alongside the team during those days.

What You’ll Achieve

• Define what “good” looks like (frameworks & rubrics): Establish clear, reusable evaluation criteria that reflect real user expectations—helpfulness, trust, tone, control, and transparency. Translate qualitative insight into scoring guidance that can be applied consistently across teams and over time.
• Run recurring evals (longitudinal & feature‑specific): Conduct longitudinal and feature‑specific surveys and studies to measure experience quality over time against defined rubrics. Lead qualitative studies, side‑by‑side comparisons, and human‑in‑the‑loop evaluation efforts to deepen understanding of where experiences break down and how they can improve. Help teams spot regressions, benchmark improvements, and understand when expectations shift.
• Anchor evaluation in real workflows (context > isolated feedback): Ensure evals reflect jobs‑to‑be‑done, user intent, and the full interaction journey (goal setting, delegation, review, iteration), not just decontextualized thumbs up/down. Help teams understand who is evaluating, what they’re trying to do, and why outputs succeed or fail.
• Identify failure modes & recovery behavior (guardrails): Uncover breakdowns, regressions, and edge cases across the system—from model behavior to UI and integrations—and study how people notice issues, correct them, and continue their work. Turn these insights into actionable guidance for guardrails, fixes, and prioritization.
• Operationalize evaluation with partners (process & tooling): Collaborate closely with Product, Design, Engineering, and Data Science to align on target use cases and build scalable evaluation loops (human‑in‑the‑loop review, longitudinal studies, and calibration of automated/LLM‑judge approaches against human judgment).

Skills You’ll Need To Bring

• Ability to operationalize insight into measurement: Comfortable turning “soft” user expectations (trust, tone, usefulness, clarity) into concrete rubrics, scoring guidelines, and observable metrics.
• AI fluency and systems thinking: Curious and hands‑on with AI products, capable of reasoning about how model behavior, uncertainty, and system constraints shape user experience. Experience evaluating AI‑enabled products (LLMs, agents, generative UI/workflow automation) and working with Data Science/ML partners on measurement strategy and evaluation tooling.
• Clear communication and impact orientation: Can align diverse partners around shared definitions of quality and create artifacts that enable teams to act consistently. Tailors storytelling to different audiences, connects research to business outcomes, and drives follow‑through so insights translate into product change.
• Strong UX research craft (quant + qual): Chooses the right methods for the question—interviews, benchmarking, surveys, experiments—and synthesizes into actionable guidance. Prioritizes ruthlessly, works through ambiguity, and balances scrappy iteration with deep dives when needed.
• Pragmatism in fast‑moving environments: Prioritizes ruthlessly, works through ambiguity, and balances scrappy iteration with deep dives when needed.
• Experience: 5+ years doing UX research in industry.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with LLM‑as‑judge methods, prompt design for evaluators, or “golden dataset” creation.
• Experience using AI research tooling for rapid synthesis and communication (e.g., Dovetail, Listen Labs, Maze, Outset, etc.) and AI observability tooling like Braintrust.
• Experience using data querying languages (e.g., SQL), scripting languages (e.g., Python), or statistical/mathematical software (e.g., R, SAS, Matlab, etc.).
• Master’s or PhD in HCI, Psychology, Behavioral Science, Anthropology, Sociology, or a related field.
• Familiarity with the work of computing heroes like Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, Bret Victor, etc. — and understanding why we’re big fans.

Notion is committed to providing highly competitive cash compensation, equity, and benefits. The compensation offered for this role will be based on multiple factors such as location, the role’s scope and complexity, and the candidate’s experience and expertise, and may vary from the range provided below. For roles based in San Francisco or New York City, the estimated base salary range for this role is $196,000–$230,000 per year.

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Equal Opportunity & Accommodations
We hire talented people from a wide range of backgrounds. If you’re excited about this role but don’t meet every bullet, we still encourage you to apply. Notion is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristic. Consistent with applicable law, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Notion provides reasonable accommodations during the application process; if you need one, please let your recruiter know.

Notion is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Notion considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Notion is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please let your recruiter know.