Senior UX Researcher

About the job

Microsoft's Intelligent Conversation and Communication Cloud (IC3) powers billions of real-time customer conversations with audio/video calling, meeting, and messaging services from anywhere seamlessly across all customer touchpoints. We are a fast growing platform powering the future of communications.

Are you curious about how people and organizations communicate through the digital medium? Do you excel in storytelling with data? Are you a leader excited to drive customer empathy across an organization? We are seeking an experienced researcher with a passion & skill for generating customer insights to help guide the development of the IC3 platform. You will be joining a growing team of Designers and Researchers in shaping the process and methodology of turning customer insights into customer experiences.

Responsibilities

In this position, you’ll need to excel in understanding the needs, wants, and desires of our customers to help inform the development roadmap. You will:

• Partner with PM & Development teams  to understand product goals and strategies  
• Create research plans that involve and engage your team and impact product design and quality 
• Design and execute appropriate research activities to answer relevant design and/or business questions, leveraging and triangulating both qualitative and quantitative methods (observation, interviews, journals, ethnography, surveys, lab studies, instrumentation, etc.) 
• Provide your design team with research context, perspective, and recommendations on what will make our products and services both useful and delightful 
• Communicate research findings through persuasive, compelling written reports and group presentations 
• Bring a wide range of both established and innovative research methods to your work and develop new methods where needed to evolve the desirability of our experiences 
• Contribute your research and perspective through the entire product design cycle, from planning to implementation to post-release 
• Provide thought leadership for the direction of user research discipline within Microsoft and the industry. 
• Partner with other researchers across Microsoft.
  

Qualifications

• Five or more years of hands-on experience conducting UX research 
• Fluency in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies (e.g. interviewing, field studies, questionnaire development and survey research, experiments, usability studies, contextual inquiry, instrumentation, biometrics, etc.) 
• An advanced degree (master’s or PhD) in behavioral or social sciences, such as psychology, human-computer interaction, human factors, sociology, anthropology or a related field 
• Fluency in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies (e.g. interviewing, field studies, questionnaire development and survey research, experiments, usability studies, contextual inquiry, instrumentation, biometrics, etc.) 
• Demonstrated experience designing and executing research programs that impact user experiences, product teams, business goals and strategic planning 
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, persuasiveness, and the ability to make compelling group presentations 
• Ability to distill complex ideas into succinct thought and impactful storytelling 
• Ability to develop creative approaches to researching complex user experience problems 
• Experience in the enterprise domain highly desirable.
  
  

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.