Head of UX Research

Duolingo is looking for a world-class UX research leader to manage and set the vision for our UXR team. This team's charter is to help drive an insights-first culture and a deep understanding of users to impact the strategy and direction of Duolingo. 

As Head of UX Research at Duolingo, you must be familiar with every aspect of the product development lifecycle for consumer mobile apps, including up-front research and discovery, definition, and specifying requirements. What makes a good candidate? Someone who has exceptional research skills, but who also understands the tradeoffs between rigor and being scrappy, and ultimately how research translates into design and product decisions. You will oversee and continue to build a team of world-class researchers across all of our products, and across multiple research disciplines. The role requires you to be an expert researcher with a proven track record of doing research that impacts a complex and diverse set of products and building and managing high-performing teams, preferably with researchers of varying specializations (e.g. qualitative research, quantitative research, international research, research programs, etc.). You will be required to articulate the vision of the team to design, engineering and product leadership and be a strong advocate for the role of research in product development. You must become a trusted, strategic partner to product stakeholders by communicating and demonstrating the value of user research, and by delivering insights that lead to demonstrable business value. You must be able to lead qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods UX researchers.

The Head of UX Research is a full-time position in Pittsburgh reporting into the Product organization. However, you might have direct reports in Seattle, New York City, or Beijing in the future, and you must be able to build strong relationships with reports and teams in other locations.

Responsibilities:

• Discover, synthesize, and socialize actionable insights that influence real product decisions.
• Ensure we are always focusing research on the highest priority things, focusing both on the short term needs as well as looking ahead to the next big challenge.
• Lead, inspire and develop a team of in-house experienced researchers.
• Manage, coach, and train a team to ensure high impact research output
• Support employees’ growth and career development
• Partner cross-functionally and help remove roadblocks where necessary.
• Support the development of programs that scale UXR across the company
• Work closely with with Data Science to find and evangelize insights
• Attract external talent and build teams.
• Serve as a thought partner and an effective strategist and collaborator with executive and cross-functional leadership teams.
• Be a key member of the product leadership team. 
• Evangelize research practices and user-centered design throughout the company.

Minimum Qualifications:

• M. A / M. S or PH. D in Human Factors, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Cognitive or Experimental Psychology, Sociology or a related field
• Expertise managing a team of researchers at a high performing consumer software company
• Research experience across different methods, with both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
• Experience with a wide range of research disciplines (e.g. design research, market research and quantitative research)
• Experience prioritizing in-house research efforts and understanding when and how to leverage 3rd-party vendors.
• Track record of discovering, synthesizing, and socializing actionable insights that have influenced real product decisions.
• Hold high social capital in the UXR community and track record of thought leadership in the industry.