Director of User Research
Course Hero is scaling! We aspire to be one of the most customer-centric companies in the world. To help us achieve this ambition, our design team is looking for an experienced User research leader to scale up the systems through which we understand and collaborate with our customers. You are a hands-on research leader and natural synthesizer with deep knowledge of how to understand what people need and then drive those insights into every aspect of the customer experience. In this role, you will help us form stronger relationships with all of our customers, including our students, educators, and tutors. You will also manage & hire researchers, building a strong team that can continue to deepen those customer relationships for years to come.
Here are some ways you will make an impact:
- Hire, manage and mentor researchers, partnering with them to create opportunities as they chart their own career growth
- Partner with Product Management, Design, Engineering, Marketing, Brand, and Customer Support leadership to contribute to our vision, strategy, and roadmaps
- Work directly with Product Managers, Designers, Marketers and more to understand our customers and shape how our products & services can best meet their needs and solve their problems
- Help define the problems we need to solve as well as the solutions by which we solve them
- Synthesize customer insights established both inside and outside the research team, including collaboration with the Customer Support team, Educator Partnerships team, on-campus student team, and more
- Help us develop our systems for tracking and improving overall user experience quality, including our Net Promoter Score (NPS) systems. Support and lead Course Hero to incorporate research-based decision making earlier in the development lifecycle
- Leverage qualitative and quantitative data to create thoughtful experiences that meet both user & business needs
- Speaking publicly both inside and outside the company about research insights and how they relate to team roadmaps, goals, and impact across the company. Demonstrate our thought leadership, robust human-centered research team & approach, and insights that affect students & educators.
- Partner with our Brand & Design teams to develop inspiring resources that can help the entire company put our customers at the center of our decision-making
Are you our next Director of UX Research?
- 3+ years of managing a user experience research team in a high-growth startup
- 7+ years of leading individual contributor roles researching user needs for products & services across desktop web, mobile web, mobile apps
- Track record of driving measurable business results and customer value through significant user research
- Deep experience transforming ambiguous business opportunities & challenges into actionable user research questions, findings, and recommendations. Love to use research to help the company identify areas with the highest potential for impact
- Confidence with the full gamut of research methods, including selecting the most appropriate methods for a given problem or question
- Experience with guiding teams who are iterating on products & services post-launch based on user data and insights
- Familiar with the Jobs to Be Done framework
- Comfortable working in a fast-moving agile environment and collaborating with designers, product managers, engineers, customer support teams and marketers; capable of working in a lean & informal way to empower teams with user insights quickly
- Excellent communication skills, experience with leading culture change and change management, and a hands-on leadership style grounded in collaboration and radical candor
- Thrive in the player-coach mode, guiding the work of other researchers while also executing research yourself
- Outstanding research portfolio, showcasing your flexibility in applying research methods in varied contexts and your ability to lead organizations to put customer needs at the center of their culture
Bonus Points
- Motivated to transform the evolution of education
- Experience conducting research for social network or marketplace products
- You are a compelling storyteller
About Us:
At Course Hero, we have an awesome team and a truly engaging culture. We are customer-focused, collaborative, responsible, gritty and we love to learn. Our bold mission is to help students graduate confident and prepared!
We are not the only ones that think we’re onto something big. Course Hero has been recognized as the 278th Fastest Growing Company in North America on Deloitte’s 2019 Technology Fast 500 and also 2019’s One of the Best Places to Work in the Bay Area by the Bay Area News Group. Read up on some of our recent news coverage, blog, and learn more about us to see what it is like to work with our team.
Benefits & Perks!
- Competitive salary and stock options
- Full medical coverage (medical, dental, vision)
- 401(k) program with match
- Education Reimbursement
- Quarterly team events and outings (Sporting Events, Escape Rooms, Go-Kart Racing, Karaoke, Bowling and much more!)
- Free lunches twice a week, on-site cafe discount, plus an endless snack and drink supply
- Onsite gym – Pacific Shores Center – Classes – Pool – Spa – Rock Wall - Massages!
- Commuter benefits, shuttle service from Redwood City, and cell-phone allowance
- Local move benefits to move within 10 miles of our office!
- 8 hours per quarter paid time for volunteering for a cause of your choice
- Front row seat to Master Educator lectures – check out our Lecture Series videos