Staff Design Researcher (100% Remote)

Our Customer is a leading global collaboration platform that's transforming the way people work together, from the smallest business to the largest enterprise. With more than 500 million registered users across more than 180 countries, their mission is to unleash the world’s creative energy by designing a more enlightened way of working. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, they have more than 12 offices around the world.

Our Customer is seeking a Staff Design Researcher on a contract basis to help support their business needs. This role is 100% remote.

This is a role focusing on identifying opportunities that expand the value, adoption, and scalability in a rapidly evolving landscape. Your work will extend beyond informing individual product decisions and will guide how the company evolves, scales, and delivers AI-powered experiences that redefine how knowledge workers discover, connect, and act on content.

In this dynamic and fast-paced environment, you’ll operate as both a craft leader and strategic thought partner, embedding deeply with cross-functional stakeholders across research, design, product, engineering, sales, and marketing. You’ll be expected to influence team-level execution and executive decision-making alike, ensuring experiences are deeply useful, magical, and grounded in human needs. Your work will influence offerings and help create magical, reliable, and delightful experiences that redefine knowledge work.

Responsibilities:

• Lead end-to-end research initiatives (strategic and evaluative)
• Collaborate with product and design leads to define product direction
• Partner with beta customers to uncover unmet needs and market gaps
• Conduct mixed-methods research (qualitative focus with some quantitative)
• Translate insights into actionable recommendations for product and GTM strategy
• Manage 2–3 concurrent projects in different stages (planning, execution, analysis)

Skills and Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in UX Research, with a proven track record of driving product and strategic decisions at scale.
• Deep fluency in a broad range of research, qualitative and quantitative methodologies across the product lifecycle, from early generative to evaluative and longitudinal.
• Demonstrated experience in shaping product vision, working across complex product ecosystems or B2B/enterprise environments.
• Skilled at operating in 0->1 contexts, rapidly synthesizing ambiguity into clarity and direction.
• Strong executive presence and storytelling ability, and able to influence through insight and empathy across diverse stakeholder groups.
• Actively mentor peers, contribute to team rituals, hiring, and foster a collaborative research culture
• Strategic Research Leadership – proven ability to drive company-level recommendations using diverse methodologies
• Stakeholder Management – strong communication, influence, and ability to navigate differing opinions
• Methodological Flexibility – comfortable operating in a fast-paced, zero-to-one environment with compressed timelines (e.g., condensing 6-month studies into 2-week sprints)

Preferred:

• Experience with B2B or enterprise SaaS products
• Familiarity with security, admin personas, or IT buyer needs
• Background in survey design and tooling (Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Sprig)
• Exposure to AI platforms (preferred, not required)
• Familiarity with Figma (helpful, not essential)

We offer a competitive salary range for this position. Most candidates who join our team are hired at the median of this range, ensuring fair and equitable compensation based on experience and qualifications.

Contractor benefits are available through our 3rd Party Employer of Record (Available upon completion of waiting period for eligible engagements)

Benefits include: Medical, Dental, Vision, 401k.

Please note: In order to to create a safe, productive work environment, our client is requiring all contractors who plan to be onsite to be fully vaccinated according to the CDC guidelines. At the point of offer, contractors will be required to attest their vaccination status.

An Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.