Sr. UX Researcher

Job Description

Job Description

Who are we?

Smarsh empowers its customers to manage risk and unleash intelligence in their digital communications. Our growing community of over 6500 organizations in regulated industries counts on Smarsh every day to help them spot compliance, legal or reputational risks in 80+ communication channels before those risks become regulatory fines or headlines.  Relentless innovation has fueled our journey to consistent leadership recognition from analysts like Gartner and Forrester, and our sustained, aggressive growth has landed Smarsh in the annual Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing American companies since 2008.

We are looking for a Senior UX Researcher to contribute to our end-to-end research across our product organization. This is a research-first role: you will spend the majority of your time generating and evaluating user insights that directly shape product direction. You will also bring light design sensibility to the way you communicate findings, and contribute modestly to our design system at the code level.

This is not a design engineering role. If you thrive on deep human understanding, are fluent in both discovery and validation methods, and know how to turn research into decisions — this is built for you.

How will you contribute?

Research (Primary — 80%)

• Plan and execute generative research: user interviews, contextual inquiry, diary studies, and ethnographic observation to uncover unmet needs and opportunity spaces.

• Design and run evaluative research: usability studies, concept testing, prototype reviews, and survey-based validation at key product milestones.

• Define research questions collaboratively with product, design, and engineering partners, then own execution from recruitment through synthesis.

• Develop and maintain a research repository that makes insights discoverable and actionable across teams.

• Communicate findings clearly to audiences ranging from ICs to senior leadership, adapting depth and format to the audience.

• Advocate for the user in roadmap and prioritization conversations, backed by evidence.

• Contribute to and evolve team research standards, tools, and practices.

 

Design & Communication (20%)

• Create clear, well-structured deliverables that translate research into action: journey maps, synthesis artifacts, storyboards, annotated findings decks, and opportunity frameworks.

• Collaborate closely with product designers to ensure research insights are reflected in design decisions and interaction patterns.

• Facilitate participatory design activities and co-creation sessions with users and internal stakeholders.

 

Front-End Contribution (Light)

Make targeted HTML, CSS, and JavaScript contributions to our design system — primarily to support research prototypes and interactive stimuli for studies.

Work within existing component library patterns; you won’t be architecting systems or building production features from scratch.

Collaborate with design engineers to ensure research prototypes accurately represent intended interactions.

What will you bring?

Research Expertise

• 5+ years of UX research experience, with a demonstrated mixed-methods practice spanning both generative and evaluative approaches.

• Deep fluency in qualitative methods (interviews, contextual inquiry, diary studies) and strong working knowledge of quantitative methods (surveys, behavioral analytics, A/B test interpretation).

• Experience recruiting and managing research participants across diverse populations.

• Proven ability to design research that drives product decisions — not just informs them.

• Familiarity with research operations: managing vendors, tools, panels, and research repositories.

 

Design Fluency

• Ability to produce polished, well-structured synthesis artifacts — journey maps, mental model diagrams, opportunity frameworks — that designers and PMs can act on directly.

• Proficiency with Figma or equivalent tools for creating research communication materials and lightweight prototypes.

• Understanding of interaction design principles sufficient to critically evaluate design decisions and contribute meaningfully to design reviews.

 

Technical Skills

• Working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript at a level that enables building and modifying interactive prototypes for research purposes.

• Comfort contributing to an existing component library — reading documentation, following established patterns, and making targeted changes.

• Familiarity with design systems concepts (tokens, component patterns, variants) is a plus; deep front-end engineering expertise is not required.

 

Collaboration & Communication

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of influencing product direction through research.

• Experience facilitating workshops, alignment sessions, and research readouts with cross-functional teams.

• Comfortable operating with ambiguity; able to scope and prioritize research independently in a fast-moving environment.

• Mentorship experience or genuine interest in developing junior researchers.

Nice to Have

• Experience embedding in or contributing to a design system team.
• Background in a domain with complex or technical user needs (e.g., enterprise software, developer tools, financial products).
• Familiarity with accessibility research practices and inclusive design principles.
• Experience with unmoderated research platforms (UserTesting, Maze, Lyssna) and synthesis tools (Dovetail, EnjoyHQ, Aurelius).

Preferred Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree or higher in Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Anthropology, Information Science, or a related field — or equivalent practical experience. Advanced degrees are valued but not required.

What This Role Is Not

This is not a design engineering or front-end engineering role. Candidates whose primary expertise is in building design systems, writing production code, or UI component development will likely find this role a poor fit. We are looking for someone who leads with research and complements that with design and code skills — not the reverse.

What do we offer?

• Healthcare insurance: We provide medical, dental, and vision insurance, and a flexible spending account that allows you to set aside pre-tax dollars to pay for eligible out-of-pocket expenses.
• Stock options.
• Personal time off: A healthy work-life balance is critical to your success at the office. Smarsh offers a “take-what-you-need” time off policy as well as flexible work arrangements.
• 401K Match: Smarsh provides a 4% 401K match for which employees are fully vested on day one.
• Sabbatical: The Smarsh sabbatical programme provides a time to recharge, study or simply do something you are passionate about away from the workplace. Employees are eligible after six years of service.
• Recognition: We’re big on kudos for a job well done. Our employee-recognition programme enables co-workers to nominate their peers who best embody our core values for recognition.

The above salary range represents Smarsh's good faith and reasonable estimate of the range of possible base compensation at the time of posting. Any applicable bonus programs will be discussed during the recruiting process.

 

The salary for this role will be set based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to, internal equity, experience, education, location, specialty and training.

 

Local cost of living assessments are done for each new hire at the time of offer.

Don't meet every requirement? Apply anyway! We value diverse candidates and encourage applications, even if you don't perfectly match the job description. Studies have shown that some strong candidates may self-select out of the interview process prematurely, at Smarsh we encourage an inclusive, high-performing environment.

 

Smarsh is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to their race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran. Smarsh invites all qualified interested applicants to apply for career opportunities. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions. Including frequency of functions

About our culture

Smarsh hires lifelong learners with a passion for innovating with purpose, humility and humor. Collaboration is at the heart of everything we do. We work closely with the most popular communications platforms and the world’s leading cloud infrastructure platforms. We use the latest in AI/ML technology to help our customers break new ground at scale. We are a global organization that values diversity, and we believe that providing opportunities for everyone to be their authentic self is key to our success. Smarsh leadership, culture, and commitment to developing our people have all garnered Comparably.com Best Places to Work Awards. Come join us and find out what the best work of your career looks like.