Senior UX Designer & Researcher

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior UX Designer & Researcher based in United States.** As a Senior UX Designer & Researcher, you will shape the user experience of a sophisticated financial planning and performance management platform used by businesses worldwide. Combining user research with hands-on design, you will uncover the needs of finance professionals and translate your findings into intuitive, efficient, and accessible digital experiences. You will collaborate closely with product managers, engineers, content specialists, and customer-facing teams to solve complex, data-intensive workflow challenges. Through interviews, usability testing, prototyping, and continuous feedback, you will ensure that design decisions are grounded in real user needs and measurable outcomes. You will also contribute to shared design systems and research practices that improve consistency across the product. This opportunity is ideal for a research-driven designer who enjoys simplifying complex enterprise software and influencing product strategy in a collaborative, innovation-focused environment. ### Accountabilities: - **Conduct user research:** Plan and execute generative and evaluative research activities, including customer interviews, contextual inquiries, usability tests, concept testing, and surveys to understand user needs, behaviors, and pain points. - **Build strong customer relationships:** Collaborate with product management, customer success, and support teams to recruit research participants and maintain an ongoing pipeline of customer conversations. - **Translate insights into actionable recommendations:** Synthesize qualitative and quantitative findings into personas, journey maps, opportunity assessments, research summaries, and other deliverables that inform product decisions. - **Measure design effectiveness:** Evaluate the impact of released features through usability metrics, behavioral analytics, and customer feedback, using the results to guide iterative improvements. - **Maintain research resources:** Build and manage a centralized research repository that makes insights accessible, reusable, and valuable across teams. - **Influence product strategy:** Present research findings and design recommendations to internal stakeholders and customers, helping prioritize roadmap initiatives based on evidence and user needs. - **Design end-to-end user experiences:** Partner with product managers to define problem statements and create wireframes, user flows, interaction storyboards, and information architectures that address complex user challenges. - **Develop prototypes and mockups:** Create high-quality visual designs and interactive prototypes using Figma, following established design systems, brand guidelines, and usability best practices. - **Iterate through collaboration:** Refine design solutions based on research findings, stakeholder input, usability testing, and technical constraints, ensuring the best possible user experience within development requirements. - **Strengthen design systems:** Contribute to shared component libraries, design patterns, and documentation to improve product consistency, usability, and team efficiency. - **Partner with engineering:** Collaborate closely with developers throughout implementation, resolve design questions, and ensure that delivered solutions remain aligned with the intended user experience. - **Support team planning and continuous improvement:** Estimate workloads accurately, help prioritize design activities, and contribute to a collaborative culture focused on quality, innovation, and continuous learning. - **Explore AI-enabled experiences:** Where relevant, investigate emerging AI-powered and agentic user experiences and incorporate suitable AI tools into research and design workflows. ### Requirements: - **Professional experience:** Bring 6–8 years of experience across UX research and product design, ideally within enterprise software or B2B SaaS environments. - **Demonstrated portfolio:** Present a portfolio showcasing both research and design capabilities, clearly illustrating how user insights informed design decisions and contributed to measurable outcomes. - **Research expertise:** Have hands-on experience with qualitative methods such as user interviews, usability testing, and needs analysis, along with familiarity with quantitative research methods, surveys, and product analytics. - **User-centered design skills:** Be proficient in developing personas, user scenarios, journey maps, information architecture, wireframes, user flows, interaction designs, and interactive prototypes. - **Design tools and systems:** Demonstrate proficiency in Figma and Claude, with the ability to create and iterate on prototypes, work within established design systems, and use AI tools effectively in research and design activities. - **Enterprise product design:** Be comfortable simplifying complex workflows and translating detailed requirements into intuitive, accessible, and efficient user experiences. - **Cross-functional collaboration:** Have experience working closely with product managers and engineers throughout the product development lifecycle, from problem definition and discovery to implementation and iteration. - **Communication and storytelling:** Possess excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present research findings, explain design rationale, and influence decisions across audiences with different levels of technical expertise. - **Technical foundations:** Have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS, along with responsive design principles and an understanding of front-end development constraints. - **Analytical mindset:** Be able to interpret research findings, behavioral data, and customer feedback to identify opportunities, validate hypotheses, and measure the effectiveness of design solutions. - **Autonomy and organization:** Demonstrate strong prioritization, workload estimation, attention to detail, and the ability to manage multiple research and design initiatives effectively. **Preferred experience:** - Familiarity with financial planning and analysis (FP&A), accounting, financial consolidations, reporting, or related business processes. - Experience designing data-intensive products, including complex grids, dashboards, analytics interfaces, and reporting tools. - Experience researching or designing AI-powered and agentic user experiences, with an interest in incorporating AI into everyday design and research workflows. - Familiarity with research platforms such as UserTesting, Maze, Dovetail, or comparable tools. ### Benefits: - **Competitive annual compensation:** On-target earnings (OTE) ranging from USD $180,000 to $210,000 per year, depending on experience and location. - **Additional benefits and well-being resources:** Access to employee benefits and resources designed to support overall well-being. - **Volunteer time off:** Two dedicated volunteer days to support community involvement and meaningful causes. - **Birthday leave:** Birthday paid time off to celebrate personal milestones. - **Quarterly wellness days:** Dedicated company-wide wellness days to encourage rest, balance, and personal well-being. - **Family support:** Parental leave support that includes a provision of 13 months' worth of diapers and meal deliveries during the first month of maternity or paternity leave. - **Mentorship opportunities:** Access to a company-wide mentorship program supported by executive sponsorship, alongside monthly training programs tailored to managers. - **Employee resource groups:** Opportunities to participate in communities such as Women of Planful and Parents of Planful, with support for creating additional employee-led groups. - **Inclusive work culture:** A collaborative environment that encourages employees to bring their authentic selves to work and contribute to a welcoming, supportive workplace. - **Professional development:** Opportunities to strengthen research, design, strategic thinking, and cross-functional collaboration skills while contributing to the evolution of a complex enterprise platform.