Senior Design Researcher

OVERVIEW

At Intuit, our mission is powering prosperity around the world. Every day we innovate with our flagship products: TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp. Whether you're a consumer, self-employed, or a small business owner, we're in your corner to help make your dreams of prosperity come true through technology that touches the lives of over 100 million people.

The Virtual Expert Platform team uses design and research methods to understand the attitudes, needs, and motivations of consumers, experts, and the partners and accountants who serve small businesses, all in service of our team's goal of connecting people to experts. Our team of passionate design researchers is part of a larger internal design studio that includes product designers, design technologists, service designers, and design ops. We pride ourselves on a collaborative, customer-obsessed culture where designers and researchers feel supported and inspired.

We're looking for a Senior Design Researcher who is passionate about our mission, solving complex problems, and advocating for seamless service delivery end-to-end when connecting customers to experts. This role requires comfort with systems-level thinking in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment, bringing empathy and data together to connect dots strategically.

HOW YOU WILL LEAD

• Guide product, design, and marketing stakeholders in reframing their questions and assumptions into clear research goals, testable hypotheses, and learning plans. Articulate methodology recommendations and industry best practices to educate teams on quality research.

• Plan and conduct a wide range of research projects end-to-end to uncover deep, high-quality insights that contribute to our foundational understanding of our customers, current and future, and lead to clear opportunities for product and marketing innovation.

• Synthesize data into clear insights and frameworks that align the team on the most important problems and opportunities. Turn insights into action through collaboration, immersion, recommendations, provocations, and facilitation of ideation sessions.

• Coach designers, PMs, and cross-functional partners on conducting their own research, including responsible and effective use of AI, to scale customer empathy and research quality across the team.

• Bring an outside-in, holistic, end-to-end customer perspective to influence stakeholders and advocate for customer needs. Partner with other data teams and bring in other data sources to develop a holistic, data-backed perspective.

• Bring a positive, solution-centric, growth mindset. Work independently across multiple stakeholders and workstreams, gaining alignment on priorities, timelines, and trade-offs as necessary.

• Contribute to the evolution and leveling of the research team's craft and culture, including helping shape team standards for how we use AI in research.

Responsibilities

AI-augmented research practice:

• Experience integrating AI tools into the research workflow, from study design through synthesis and analysis, with a clear point of view on when AI accelerates the work and when human judgment must lead

• Ability to evaluate AI outputs for quality, accuracy, and bias, and to uphold research rigor and ethics whether or not AI is involved

• Curiosity about emerging AI-native research methods and a habit of experimenting responsibly

Depth of qualitative research craft:

• Demonstrated ability in designing and leading qualitative research, specifically remote IDIs, concept exploration and evaluation, and usability testing

• Strong moderation skills, able to adapt to the flow of conversation and probe to uncover deeper insights

• Commitment to ethical, inclusive research practices, from participant recruiting through reporting

• Value process and rigor but thrive in a fast-paced environment and bring creative problem solving to research

Qualifications

WHAT YOU'LL BRING

• Minimum of 5 years of experience leading design/UX research projects in a professional environment, preferably in a technology company or consulting firm

• A track record of successfully scoping and managing research engagements throughout the human-centered design process in close collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders (marketing, design, product management, customer success, etc.)

• Experience with research data collection and analysis platforms (such as UserTesting, Qualtrics, or similar), facilitation tools (such as FigJam, Claude, Cursor), and design tools (such as Figma)

Experience with mixed methods:

• Experience designing quantitative UX studies, experiments, and/or surveys and analyzing the data

• Ability to triangulate qualitative findings with survey data, product analytics, and secondary research to build a holistic, data-backed perspective

Strong synthesis and communication skills:

• Ability to translate research data into clear insights, durable frameworks, and actionable recommendations
• Strong storytelling, data visualization, and presentation skills
• Comfort presenting findings to leadership and large audiences of key stakeholders

Along with your resume, we'd love to see work samples!

Intuit provides a competitive compensation package with a strong pay for performance rewards approach. This position may be eligible for a cash bonus, equity rewards and benefits, in accordance with our applicable plans and programs (see more about our compensation and benefits at Intuit®: Careers | Benefits). Pay offered is based on factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and work location. To drive ongoing fair pay for employees, Intuit conducts regular comparisons across categories of ethnicity and gender.

San Francisco $132,500 - $179,000