We are seeking a Principal UX Researcher to join our multi-disciplinary team of over 50 user researchers and planners working on a breadth of experiences across Microsoft 365 (M365). In this position, you’ll be part of the team responsible for leveraging AI and Microsoft Copilot to enhance the user experience of workflows that involve using multiple M365 applications. You will work closely with designers, product managers, and engineers to define and deliver innovative AI powered solutions that empower people and teams to work more effectively and efficiently.
To succeed in this role, you will need to have a mixed methods research background, effective communication and storytelling skills, and the ability to drive product vision and strategy based on user and market insights. You will need to be innovative, challenging the status quo and inspiring new ideas. If you want to transform the way people work and create a positive impact on society, we would love to hear from you.
Responsibilities
- Work across organizational boundaries and across disciplines with UX Designers, Planners, UX Researchers, Data Science, Program Managers, Marketers, and Engineers to ensure that we’re addressing the most critical business and technology objectives to meet the right user needs and opportunities, landing impact from your customer-focused knowledge.
- Identify stakeholders across Microsoft and bring them along as you provide qualitative and quantitative customer feedback to influence product development at different levels of granularity, from product strategy to cross-platform coherence to feature usability.
- Tackle problems that require an understanding of complex technical constraints across multiple applications (M365 applications, operating system, web browser), platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android) and devices (Desktop, Web, Mobile) while working to guide near and long-term investments. You should have the organizational agility and acumen to know when to push against product team resistance and when to fold constraints into your recommendations.
- Understand complex systems by looking at the relationships and interactions between their parts, rather than just the individual parts themselves. Demonstrate the ability to generate insights about how these systems impact the user experience of using the product across multiple dimensions. Anticipate shifts in technical, business, and human contexts and their potential impact.
- Create research strategies and plans that leverage existing data and complement additional research that you need to execute. Derive insights from both qualitative and quantitative data. Create clarity of purpose through scoping, alignment with stakeholders, and prioritization. Key to this accountability will be identifying opportunities for growth, gaps, and customer pain points, as well as potential customer delighters.
- Define UX approaches, metrics, and work with others on research planning. Innovate and develop new approaches to measure user’s experiences.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 6+ years User Experience Research experience and/or product development experience or related experience in research
- OR Master’s Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 4+ years User Experience Research experience and/or product development experience or related experience in research
- OR Doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 3+ years User Experience Research experience and/or product development experience or related experience in research
- OR equivalent experience.
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on research and/or product planning experience, with demonstrated skill in collecting and analyzing human behavioral data to improve plans and UX in a technology industry setting
- Experience impacting both product direction and detailed experience design including on products leveraging AI and large language models (LLMs)
- 4+ years relevant domain experience within the technology sector
- 4+ years experience in research methods impacting both product direction and detailed experience design.
