Principal UX Researcher

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If you’re passionate about how technology can improve people’s lives, like exploring new ideas and product possibilities, and lead with a growth mindset, we want to hear from you!

The Microsoft AI Design & Research team is a creative community of designers, researchers, prototypers, and writers on a mission to create and deliver holistic, AI-powered customer experiences across apps and the web. Between Copilot, Edge, Bing, and apps, we’re creating end-to-end web experiences for assistance, shopping, search, ads, news, sports, and gaming. Our diverse team works collaboratively and moves fast to build useful, usable, and delightful experiences for billions of customers worldwide. Learn more about our team here.

We are seeking a Principal UX Researcher to help us set the path for our next generation of AI-powered products. For this role we’re looking for someone who can move between exploratory, generative research to rapid evaluations of prototyped ideas to building out robust evaluation benchmarks. Someone who works across organizational roles to uncover the unspoken questions and beliefs and answers them with precision, detail, and durability. Someone who always puts people first and centers their needs, problems, goals, and aspirations for the team. If this sounds like you, please apply!

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 6+ years User Experience Research experience
  • OR Master's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 4+ years User Experience Research experience
  • OR Doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 3+ years User Experience Research experience
  • OR equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• 8+ years experience working in UX research or a related field
• Extensive experience delivering 0-1 across the entire product portfolio, pulling together coherent strategic approaches
• Be comfortable swimming in ambiguity
• Experience with AI - preferably early stages of AI
• High level research skills across mixed methods
• Solid communication and presentation / storytelling skills, with the ability to energize and activate teams
• Demonstrated championing of fundamentals of user experience, including accessibility and inclusive design
• Experience with commonly used research tools

UX Research IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $137,600 - $267,000 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $180,400 - $294,000 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until December 15, 2024.

• Understand the behaviors, motivations, needs, and aspirations of our customers to create a differentiated advantage in our ability to build relevant and impactful experiences for people across the world
• Drive product strategy through rigorous programs of multi-stage research executed to the highest standards
• Balance rigor with scrappiness and the ability to push with a fast-moving team
• Drive cross-team collaborations among all disciplines from early product stages to final implementations
• Guide teams in creative new directions and help set ambitious goals that stand out from the crowd
• Identify new opportunities and generate innovative ideas to improve our processes, culture, and influence our approach to research (e.g. mindsets, methodologies)
• Lead research on highly visible products or set of business initiatives with notable risk and complexity
• Regularly influence at the highest levels of organizations
• Elevate the research craft of the team
• Embody our culture and values