Are you passionate about understanding complex systems, and processes that the Microsoft sellers, partners and customers use to do business with Microsoft? We are shaping the way we think about and build these new experiences in the rapidly changing digital world. To move forward with this vision, we need to have a deeper understanding of the context, environment, user tasks, and unmet needs.

Our Design and Research Studio is a vibrant community of talented and passionate people that are customer-obsessed with diverse expertise in Design, UX Research, Accessibility and Program Management. Yet, we share some core values around curiosity, humility, persistence, and creativity. The Design Researcher II position will be critical to building customer empathy, and a user-centered approach to inform the strategic direction we take in the Enterprise Commerce space. You will help the newly formed research team establish a reputation of world-class research, by delivering creative, agile, and strategic research outcomes which directly impact product and the business.

Responsibilities

• Influential UX researcher II  who has a breadth of product making experience to draw upon as you lead research for a major area in our Sales and Marketing space
• Balance both agile and strategic research methods on a daily basis to influence product direction, and overall user experience
• Design and execute on a cohesive and focused research plan for a critical area, establishing user experience goals and metrics as a guide post for the team to strive towards
• Conduct diverse product research activities such as market analysis, workshops, observational research, user journey mapping, scenario creation, target audience segmentation, and traditional user studies etc. and a strength in leading complex “front end” research
• Deep analytical and synthesis skills (both qualitative and quantitative) with a proven ability to turn research results into product insights
• Produce impactful artifacts generated from research findings which are visually rich and bring clarity to the space being studied
• Work closely with multiple disciplines (especially design and engineering) on aligned goals and influence business stakeholders
• Understands complex business and enterprise spaces and deliver clear, and actionable insights

Qualifications

Knowledge, experience and skills:

• Experience performing research in Design Sprints, Agile Development models and running large projects/programs which span multiple months
• 4+ years in user experience research, design research, product research or equivalent (i.e. hands on) so that you have successes and failures to draw upon
• Demonstrated agility, creativity, and growth mindset applied to large projects working collaboratively with other stakeholders
• Well established portfolio of research techniques from ethnography, field studies, interviews, usability studies, concept validation, A/B testing, user journey mapping, surveys, scorecards and competitive analysis. You will use this vast experience to draw upon for the development of the curriculum
• Excellent communication skills (written and oral) and strong attention to visual details
• Experience with developing research programs, scorecards and outcomes that have resulted in a strong product strategy and impact
• Strong aptitude for project management, schedules, and managing complexity
• A passion for articulating how you understand customer needs, and ability to influence others

Preferred, not required:

• Expertise in modern research tools such as Dscout, Qualtrics, UserTesting and/or UserZoom
• User Research experience in a complex space such as enterprise, education, CRM or other business tools and applications
• Experience with visual design creation tools such as Figma, PPT, Visio or equivalent to create strong visual designs and information visualization of insights
• Added bonus would be expertise and hands on experience working with multiple data sets such as telemetry, sentiment, and unstructured data sets and combining them with qualitative insights to paint a holistic picture 

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. 

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.