Meraki makes setting up and maintaining reliable Internet and Internet-powered devices easier than ever before. We enable organizations everywhere, from local libraries to hotels operating worldwide, to focus on their mission and have technology that simply works. As the fastest growing cloud-managed networking team in the world and one of the highest performing acquisitions in Cisco’s history, our products and technology architecture are changing the approach to enterprise networking and making cloud-managed IT a reality.

We’re looking for a Lead UX Researcher to lead research and experience strategy projects, mentor others around research best practices, and help craft the team’s processes. Working with design, product management, and engineering partners, you will identify the right projects to seek using mixed research methods that get answers to our questions and inspire our user experiences. You will work to understand the complex needs and motivations of IT administrators and help the organization develop empathy accordingly.

Meraki believes the quality of our products is dependent on the quality of our teams. We place a high value on cultivating the growth and development of everyone we hire. On the UX team, we give and get feedback early and often, share what we know, and learn from each other. As a Lead UX researcher, you will be key in helping bring further definition to our UX research practice.

Our team’s primary focus is on software, but we also find opportunities to collaborate with teams across the organization and think about how to improve the entire customer journey.

You’d be a good fit if you:

• Have a desire to understand people; their behaviors, attitudes, and motivations
• Find excitement in working in an industry with complex workflows
• Led complex, mixed-method research initiatives to help companies to discover and tackle problems
• Can identify the best methods, qualitative and quantitative, to get to actionable insights and scalable solutions
• Demonstrate good judgment in tradeoffs between time/effort and quality
• Collaborate with other researchers, designers, engineers, PMs, etc.
• Skilled in listening to and helping product owners, partners, and other team members identify the right research questions
•  An effective verbal and written communication style to distill complex research results into understandable, compelling, and actionable insights
• A self-starter - you don’t wait for orders and identify what we need to learn and find the answers
• Are adaptable, resilient, and welcome change
• Have a growth mentality - you are continually learning
• Bring energy, empathy, and a sense of humor to the office every day

Your day today:

• Lead, coach, and collaborate with others on generative and evaluative research efforts
• Take initiative to help formalize a research practice on a growing design team (e.g., identify tools, establish standards and templates, refine process)
• Set standards for other team members (designers, PMs, etc.) to conduct research and/or gather sound data in conversations with customers
• Synthesize findings into models, stories, and frameworks that help teams take action on insights
• Develop and execute on a plan for research operations which includes scheduling, screening, and communicating with research participants, and maintaining a customer and non-customer participant list
• Inspire the team with new methods, training, and thought leadership

Requirements & Qualifications:

• Graduate degree with a focus on Psychology, Research Methods, Human-computer Interaction (HCI), or similar
• At least 8 years’ experience with qualitative and quantitative research techniques such as 1:1 interviews, co-creation sessions, diary studies, surveys, usability testing
• Experience with analytics tools such as Qualtrics, Usertesting.com, Google Analytics, and FullStory
• Experience working in cross-functional teams

Meraki is based in the Mission Bay area of San Francisco, less than a 5-minute walk from the Chase Center and with beautiful views of the AT&T Ballpark and the Bay beyond. You will have access to an onsite gym, multiple kitchens stocked with high-quality snacks, a coffee bar, catered lunches every single day, and a generous benefits package.

Cisco is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis. Cisco will consider for employment, on a case by case basis, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

At Cisco Meraki, we’re challenging the status quo with the power of diversity, inclusion, and collaboration. When we connect different perspectives, we can imagine new possibilities, inspire innovation, and release the full potential of our people. We’re building an employee experience that includes appreciation, belonging, growth, and purpose for everyone.