Are you passionate about bringing clarity to complex systems, and processes, while thinking broadly end to end? The CSEO Studio is shaping the way we think about and build the Retail experiences for our Microsoft customers, and sales associates. Using leadership principles such as driving to clarity, creating energy, and delivering results, you will establish the discipline of research within our Commercial Retail Team who is responsible for building the systems, and technology that runs our Retail Stores.

Our CSEO Studio at Microsoft is a vibrant community of talented and passionate people that are customer-obsessed with diverse expertise in Design, UX Research, Accessibility and Program Management. Yet, we share some core values around curiosity, humility, persistence, and creativity.

The Senior User Research position will be critical to building customer empathy, and a user-centered approach to inform the strategic direction we take as a company in the Retail space. While being part of a larger research team, you will help us establish a reputation of world-class research, by delivering creative, agile, and strategic research outcomes which directly impact product and the business.

Responsibilities

Key responsibilities:

• Influential Senior UX researcher leader who has a breadth of product making experience to draw upon as you lead research in the area of Modern Retail
• Balance both agile and strategic research methods on a daily basis to influence product direction, and overall user experience
• Experience as a research team lead for a large business area, delivering a user research plan and strategy
• Design and execute promptly on a cohesive and focused research plan for a critical area, establishing user experience goals and metrics as a guide post for the team to strive towards
• Conduct diverse product research activities such as market analysis, workshops, observational research, user journey mapping, scenario creation, target audience segmentation, and traditional user studies etc. and a strength in leading complex “front end” research
• Strong synthesis skills (both qualitative and quantitative) with a proven ability to turn research results into product insights
• Produce impactful artifacts generated from research findings which are visually rich and bring clarity to the space being studied.
• Work closely with multiple disciplines (especially design and engineering) on aligned goals and influence business stakeholders
• Understands complex business and enterprise spaces and deliver clear, and actionable insights

Qualifications

Knowledge, experience and skills:

• Experience performing research in Design Sprints, Agile Development models and running large projects/programs which span multiple months
• 7+ years in user experience research, design research, product research or equivalent (i.e. hands on) so that you have successes and failures to draw upon
• Well established portfolio of research techniques from ethnography, field studies, interviews, usability studies, concept validation, A/B testing, user journey mapping, surveys, scorecards and competitive analysis. You will use this vast experience to draw upon for the development of the curriculum
• Excellent communication skills (written and oral) and strong attention to visual details
• Experience with developing research programs, scorecards and outcomes that have resulted in a strong product strategy and impact
• Strong aptitude for project management, schedules, and managing complexity
• A passion for articulating how you understand customer needs, and ability to influence others

Preferred, not required:

• Expertise in modern research tools such as dscout, Qualtrics, UserTesting and/or UserZoom
• User Research experience in a complex space such as enterprise, education, CRM or other business tools and applications
• Experience with visual design creation tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, PPT, Visio or equivalent to create strong visual designs and information visualization of insights

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.  We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

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