Senior User Researcher
Futureheads Recruitment | B Corp™ · United States
Apply & track with Apply EdgeRole: Senior User ResearcherSalary: €80,000
This is a newly created, senior individual-contributor role sitting within the Product and Design function. You'll work closely alongside Product Managers, Designers and a data specialist, with additional support from Customer Experience, Sales and other customer-facing colleagues who are already close to the user base.Customer and user feedback currently lives across several different teams and systems, with no shared process for turning it into clear, reusable insight. The business is looking for someone to introduce that structure, advising on when and how research should happen, what good evidence looks like, and how to make findings stick, without burying the team in process.The role bridges two connected hubs; design and engineering on one side, and product, CX and a large share of the customer base on the other, based in a different region, so you'll need to be comfortable working across time zones.
What You'll Do
Shape the research approach: Define a practical, lightweight way of doing research that suits a small product organisation. Introduce the right habits, tools and templates, and help the wider team build confidence in taking part in research themselves.Run hands-on research: Plan and conduct interviews, usability testing, concept testing and other qualitative methods. Synthesise findings into something the team can act on.Set priorities: Identify where research will make the biggest difference to product decisions. Write briefs, frame the right questions, and be honest about when research isn't the answer.Build user access: Partner with Customer Experience, Sales and Account Management to develop reliable ways of reaching users, including specialist, hard-to-reach audiences within a niche industry.Connect qualitative and quantitative evidence: You don't need to be a data scientist, but you should be comfortable interpreting product and behavioural data, partnering with the team's data specialist, and combining different types of evidence.Make insight reusable: Create a simple approach to storing and sharing findings so evidence informs future decisions, not just the one it was commissioned for.Educate and influence: Help the wider team understand what research can and can't answer. Challenge assumptions constructively and build trust through pragmatism and clear communication.What We're Looking ForWe're looking for someone with solid research experience who's comfortable taking the lead on how research gets done; not necessarily someone who's done it all before. If you've worked somewhere research was still finding its feet and you helped make it better, that's exactly the kind of experience we’d value.You should be able to show that you have:Planned and run your own research, choosing methods, writing briefs, recruiting participants without heavy operational support.Synthesised messy or incomplete evidence into clear, actionable findings.Built trust with stakeholders who weren't used to working with a researcher.Connected research to real product decisions, not just delivered reports.Worked pragmatically when user access, data or time were limited.Core CapabilitiesStrong qualitative skills: interviews, usability testing, concept evaluation, synthesis, pattern recognition.Comfortable working with quantitative evidence alongside qualitative insight.Self-directed: Able to identify where research is needed, manage priorities and communicate trade-offs without waiting for detailed direction.A confident communicator who can educate, challenge and bring people along.Pragmatic: favours useful evidence over methodological perfection.DesirableExperience in B2B or enterprise products.Experience with specialist or hard-to-reach user groups.Experience working across distributed, cross-timezone teams.Experience setting up research repositories or insight systems.