Senior User Experience Researcher

Job Description

GitHub powers the software development community. Since 2008, our platform has brought people together to collaborate on code, share ideas, and solve problems to build the future. As the largest host of open source software, GitHub is proud to be the place that open source communities like Swift, React, Kubernetes, and Node.js call home. From NASA using GitHub to put a rover on Mars to Mailchimp working to improve email, exciting new things happen every day on our platform.

GitHub is looking for UX Researcher to join the Product Design organization at GitHub. This is a new role that will focus on undertaking and developing the practice of user research at GitHub.

Supporting the future of software development requires us to deeply understand the experiences of all developers around the world. There are many barriers to people growing their development skills, collaborating across the globe, and having equal opportunities to impact the future of software. We have much to learn at GitHub and need your help in understanding the diverse needs of our customers.

In collaboration with product designers and product managers, you’ll help everyone focus on the user. Your research will help us build useful, usable, and delightful new products and features for people, as well as support continual innovation on our existing features. You’ll inspire change at all stages of product development by delivering compelling written, in-person and visual presentations on your findings.

We know it’s challenging to introduce new practices to a company, but you won’t be going it alone. You’ll have the support of people with experience building new teams at GitHub, including the Design Infrastructure manager, the Director of Product Design, and other team members who are excited to welcome you to the organization. Together with Product Design leadership and Product management, you’ll develop guidelines and resources for research at GitHub—this will build upon the work of the Design Research Group. For specific research projects, you’ll work as an embedded member of a product development team so that you can practice and evolve an effective research process within the product development lifecycle.

This is an opportunity to impact how our organization develops the practice of research. If you think this is for you, we’ll give the support you need to do your best work in getting there.

Responsibilities:

• Build and scale usability and qualitative research methods and processes, and mentor future additions to the team.
• Collaborate closely with design, product management, and engineering leads to prioritize research opportunities in a fast-paced environment.
• Create understanding and empathy around user needs, stated and unstated, for your entire product team.
• Present research findings with a compelling presentation and communication style
• Coach and mentor others
• Occasionally travel to conduct research

Minimum Qualifications:

• You have broad experience with a wide variety of research methods applied across the product development process
• You have experience conducting semi-structured interviews, contextual field visits, usability testing either live or remote
• You are excited by the opportunity to build research practices within a fast-paced product development environment.
• You know best practices only matter if your partners across the company are on board—that’s why you work closely with your product partners to scale strategies that work for everyone.

Preferred Qualifications:

• You have experience conducting research on developer tools or technical products
• You have strengths in a particular research specialty: design strategy, generative and exploratory research, surveys, statistical modeling, analytics/visualization, etc.
• You have experience with user-centered design
• You have successfully built research teams in previous companies

Who We Are:

GitHub is the developer company. Over 36 million people use GitHub to build amazing things together across 100 million repositories. We make it easier for developers to be developers: to work together, to solve challenging problems, to create the world’s most important technologies. We foster a collaborative community that can come together—as individuals and in teams—to create the future of software and make a difference in the world.

What We Value:

Collaboration: We believe the best work is done together.
Empathy: We believe in putting people first.
Quality: We believe in setting the standard for excellence.
Positive Impact: We believe in making the world a better place through our work.
Shipping: We believe in creating things for the people using them.

Why You Should Join:

At GitHub, we constantly strive to create an environment that allows our employees (Hubbers) to do the best work of their lives. We've designed one of the coolest workspaces in San Francisco (HQ), where over half of our Hubbers work, snack, and create daily. The other half of our Hubbers work remotely in 18 countries across the globe. Here is a complete list of where we can hire!

We are also committed to keeping Hubbers healthy, motivated, focused and creative. We've designed our top-notch benefits program with these goals in mind. In a nutshell, we've built a place where we truly love working, we think you will too.

GitHub is made up of people from a wide variety of backgrounds and lifestyles. We embrace diversity and invite applications from people of all walks of life. We don't discriminate against employees or applicants based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, religion, age, national origin, citizenship, disability, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other differences. Also, if you have a disability, please let us know if there's any way we can make the interview process better for you; we're happy to accommodate!

Where We Can Hire

Please note that benefits vary by country, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask your Talent Partner.

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