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User Research Lead

Universe opens up the possibilities of the internet to everyone. A magical grid that distills the web into simple Lego-like building blocks. With our app, anyone on earth can build a custom website or online store in seconds — without code, all from a phone.


We are a team that prioritizes user insights in a big way. Our design, product, growth, marketing, and support teams spend time every week intentionally gathering user feedback and digging into user behavior. Now we’re looking for someone to join our team and lead user research efforts in a dedicated way.



The Role 👤


We are looking for an experienced user research professional to build a world-class research function that will help the whole team understand what existing and potential customers need to be successful (and delighted) using Universe. The insights you bring to the table will directly impact our product roadmap, our marketing efforts, and our growth strategies.


This role will report to the Strategy and Operations Lead (Head of Growth), and you will work extremely closely with our Design, Product, Engineering, Marketing and Support teams. As our team continues to grow, we expect that you will need to hire additional research professionals to join your team.


What you’ll do 🔧


Lead the research practice at Universe in a way that weaves user insights into our design, product, engineering, growth, marketing and support teams’ efforts


Prioritize, plan and execute a high volume of user research on a regular cadence. We work fast and we prioritize quickly - and user insights are a critical ingredients.


Conduct primary research on all areas of the current (and future) product: design research studies and tests, recruit participants, facilitate sessions, and analyze results.


Supplement primary research with relevant additional data analysis. You’ll work closely with the growth team to coordinate A/B tests and other experiments to better understand user behavior


Research operations: we don’t expect you to do all the research yourself! Instead, we want you to empower our other teams to do research as well by giving them training, tools, processes and best practices that level up their research skills and augment your efforts


Make sure we are applying what we learn: make recommendations based on your research findings to a wide range of audiences at Universe (from the CEO down) using written reports, in-person presentations, and whatever else it takes to ensure we listen to our creators :-)


In time, recruit, hire, and manage an exceptional team of user researchers


Who you are 👀


No need to have everything on this list, but we are looking for someone who has at least some of the following attributes:


Experience in a research-focused role that had significant impact on product/company goals. Your title might not have had “Researcher” in it, but you have significant experience planning, executing and analyzing user research


Experience with (and opinions about when to use) a range of evaluative and generative research methods: field studies, ethnography, participatory design, diary studies, usability testing, A/B testing, etc


Comfort using a range of tools and quantitative strategies to parse and understand research data/notes - and turn that data into insightful and actionable recommendations


Great communication skills. You are someone who takes pride in being able to look at a hundred details but present a big-picture summary, and you have the maturity to engage in healthy debate that helps teammates with different opinions reach a consensus


Willingness to be scrappy - to do whatever it takes to push forward in an early-stage environment


Nice to have: prior experience with consumer-facing apps and/or experience building a team of user researchers focused on consumer software products. Must have: lots of enthusiasm for the opportunity we're tackling at Universe!


Join us.