Lead UX Researcher

Introduction
IBM Sustainability Software is responsible for creating software products that help our customers optimize operations and cost while reducing waste and emissions. We are looking for our next lead user researcher to help our Maximo product team deliver delightful end-to-end experiences informed by user needs. Maximo is an asset lifecycle management solution that helps enterprises plan operate and optimize their assets to improve operational efficiency.

As a Lead Researcher on the Maximo team you will lead and execute on UX research projects and uncover insights to influence the direction of our product roadmap. You will share craft expertise provide mentorship to early career researchers and peers and collaborate on cross-org projects – in both your local studio and within the Sustainability Software Research team. Rigor attention to detail insatiable curiosity comfort with ambiguity and a willingness to learn will be critical to your success.

Your Role and Responsibilities

1. Strategic Product Leadership: Develop and execute a comprehensive UX research strategy that aligns with business goals ensuring a user-centered approach throughout the product development lifecycle. Define the research roadmap that you and your user research team will execute.
2. Practice Leadership: Mentor UX researchers providing guidance and feedback and fostering their professional growth. Help drive best practices for research methods leading by example and contribute to the creation of repeatable processes that enable a user research organization to grow and scale.
3. Research Planning: Define research goals methodologies and timelines for various projects ensuring alignment with product objectives and user needs.
4. User Research: Conduct qualitative and quantitative research studies such as interviews surveys competitive analyses prioritization exercises concept testing contextual inquiry and user journey mapping to gather insights about user behaviors needs and preferences. Design Thinking workshop facilitation skills are also beneficial.
5. Data Analysis: Analyze research data and derive actionable insights that drive informed design decisions and product improvements.
6. Stakeholder Collaboration + Influence: Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including executive and “pre-executive” level designers product managers and engineers to advocate for user needs and ensure research findings are effectively communicated and integrated into the product development process.
7. User Advocacy: Serve as a user advocate ensuring that user feedback and insights are consistently considered and prioritized in product decisions.
8. Industry Trends: Stay up to date with the latest UX research methodologies industry trends and best practices and proactively apply them to enhance our research processes and deliverables.
9. Research Operations: Establish and optimize research operations including participant recruitment research tools and documentation to streamline research activities and ensure high-quality deliverables.
10. Collaboration and Communication: Foster a collaborative and inclusive research culture encouraging knowledge sharing and effective communication across teams and stakeholders.
11. Executive eminence: Measure and present the impact that UX research has produced through your leadership and work.

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• Proven experience (8+ years) conducting user research throughout the entire product development lifecycle.
• Strong leadership skills with experience leading/mentoring other UX researchers and proven experience contributing to the growth of a research practice.

• Expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research methods (as noted above).
• Proficiency in data collection and analysis and the ability to triangulate customer insights from a combination of data sources to derive meaningful insights.
• Solid understanding of UX principles design thinking and human-centered design processes.

Preferred Technical and Professional Expertise

• Excellent communication and presentation skills with the ability to leverage storytelling to effectively convey complex research findings and recommendations to diverse stakeholders. Emphasis on executive-level communication.
• Demonstrated experience in collaborating with cross-functional teams and driving UX research initiatives within an agile product development environment.
• Passion for user-centered design empathy for users and a commitment to delivering exceptional user experiences.