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Head of UX Research

Design jobs at Gusto

Gusto

Gusto is looking for a Head of User Experience Research to empower our small but growing User Research team and establish a multifaceted approach to bringing meaningful, timely, and actionable insights to teams across Gusto.

 

About Gusto

Gusto is a modern, online people platform that helps small businesses take care of their teams. Every touchpoint a business has with their employees offers an opportunity for meaningful connection, from payroll and health insurance, to onboarding and team management. We believe that work can empower a better life and that small businesses are the backbone of the economy. Gusto’s team is distributed with home bases in San Francisco, Denver, and New York, and with many people working remotely across the US and Canada. We serve over 100,000 businesses and over a million of their employees. Read more about what it’s like to work at Gusto on our careers page

Our mission is to create a world where work empowers a better life, and it starts right here at Gusto. That’s why we’re committed to building a collaborative and inclusive workplace, both physically and virtually. Learn more about our Total Rewards philosophy

 

About the Role

We envision an expansive role for research to make an impact across Gusto. Although the Head of UX Research will be a part of our EPD organization (Engineering, Product, Design) and report to our Chief Design Officer, our goal is to think beyond the software we build with an eye towards the holistic customer experience with our software and with our service. Our Head of UX Research will create a program where recommendations, relevant information, anecdotes, insights and stories will help our teams understand the problems they’re solving more deeply, bring them closer to the day-to-day realities and challenges of our customers, and help them make better decisions more quickly. 

Our research approach is not academic in nature, and our goal isn’t to be comprehensive. We’re motivated to ship valuable experiences with a high level of velocity and we value a bias to action. For this role, we need someone who is comfortable applying an experimental and creative mindset to how we approach research and develop insights, and someone who brings insights to life through simple and compelling storytelling. At Gusto, we care about empowerment. In this role, you’ll need to be excited by the prospect of partnering with research operations to create repeatable processes that enable non-researchers to connect with customers and conduct their own low-risk research. This is also important because it creates space for our researchers to focus on deeper, more meaningful, strategic work. 

 

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

  • Drive the strategy and execution that connects information and creates useful insights about customers, and help people across Gusto understand and apply customer stories to their work.
  • Coach and empower a team of researchers and research operations people, with room to grow and shape the team and practice. 
  • Build strong relationships with leaders in our product management, data science, marketing, and customer support teams and work with them to identify opportunities to create insights that will help teams make informed, timely decisions about product direction and strategy. 
  • Experiment with creative ways to reduce the distance to our customers through approaches such as panels, community engagement strategies, and co-design opportunities. 
  • Be obsessed with finding the stories and insights that help people feel connected to the people who use Gusto. 
  • Steward the evolution of Gusto’s key personas and unified journey map.

 

Here’s what we're looking for:

Strong UX Research Leadership and People Empowerment Skills 

Experience scaling a research team and delivering on a strategy across a large, complex area, ideally in a technology company — as part of your interview process we’ll ask you to walk us through a case study example of this.

An inclusive, empowering approach to encourage non-researchers to get close to customers and gather their own insights to inform their product decisions and strategies.

Cross-Functional Partnership and Communications Skills 

Top-notch communication and storytelling skills — you are attuned to the audience and know how to craft a memorable, compelling story with their needs in mind.

Experience partnering with senior leaders in Design, Product, Marketing, Data Science, and Customer Support to drive the creation of cohesive, actionable insights.

Exceptional craft and expertise in the specific function of UX Research 

Familiarity and fluency in quantitative methodologies and opinions about how market research and segmentation data might inform our picture of existing and prospective customers.

Expert-level knowledge of UX research practices with at least 10 years’ experience doing hands-on research with 4 of those years leading UX researchers.

Customer-obsession and a vision for how research teams and practices can be structured to deliver high impact, timely, and iterative insights about customers to product teams.

 

Our cash compensation range for this role is USD $187,000 to USD $217,000 per year in Denver & most remote locations, and USD $220,000 to USD $256,000 per year in San Francisco & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Our customers come from all walks of life and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes our company stronger. If you share our values and our enthusiasm for small businesses, you will find a home at Gusto.

Gusto is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. Gusto considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Gusto is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at accommodations@gusto.com. 

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