Microsoft Looking For Principal User Researcher at Redmond, WA Full Time

Principal User Researcher – Search + Assistant

Do you want to work in delivering AI and AI-backed services in a deeply human centric way?

Are you passionate about understanding and empathizing with people, and using that insight to help build software and service experiences that meet their needs?

Are conversational, personified, multi-turn, and data driven services interesting?

At Microsoft our mission is to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. Artificial intelligence is changing everything about the ways we design and build products and experiences. Microsoft is creating AI-powered experiences that help people achieve more with less effort, via ongoing, technology driven conversations with our customers, building a relationship where we work to understand them and earn their trust through transparency and respect.

We are looking for a passionate, confident, and focused Principal Research Manager who can help to shape how we manage our work and partnerships to help create experiences that our customers love. If you join us, you will be joining a research organization of over 65 people serving design and product managers across Microsoft’s Experiences + Devices division.

M365 Core is a global team – you will work closely with a multi-disciplinary team of designers, product managers, and engineers located across several core locations (Redmond Washington, Vancouver BC, London, Mexico City, Norway, and China) and beyond. Staying connected and keeping our work aligned to create cohesive experiences is one of our biggest challenges – we seek candidates who work well in open ways and across time zones, contexts, cultures, languages, and focus areas.

We are seeking a researcher who can leverage skill in qualitative research practices (including moderation, creating screeners, and crafting discussion guides and unmoderated research designs) and quantitative methods (including demonstrated ability to collaborate with data scientists and engineers and the ability to work with descriptive and summary data or experimental outputs) to build new and improve existing intelligence backed product experiences.

We desire researchers who instinctively do more than simply plan and execute research, observe people and data, or write reports. We want people who routinely and easily use research to build powerful understanding of user needs, desires, and emotions, and then use that understanding to help craft intelligent experiences the empower all our customers to achieve what they want. The right person to work with us will be able to apply a broad set of research techniques to create empathy and insight, and is a person who then builds powerful and compelling narratives to tell the story of those insights in ways that change product development.

Our team is dedicated to creating an inclusive culture to build the most diverse and talented group of employees possible. We are looking for someone who wants to learn, grow, and embody new ways of working. If you embrace a growth mindset, have a record of accomplishment and of delivering results, and you find energy in collaborating with others, we are an awesome team to join.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities

Build and maintain a research portfolio centered around search and assistants, leading research efforts and creating end-to-end plans for research studies and programs for service(s) and user experiences that are embedded across M365 applications.

Proactively identifies research needs and potential problem areas that need to be researched while balancing reactive research requests by PM and design teams.

Can demonstrate positive product and business impact through

Using sense-making/analysis to synthesize and distill data for a product, product line, or service, grounded in quantitative and/or qualitative data.

Sharing insights in a way that is easy to understand in order to activate design and engineering processes.

Promoting emotional connections to a customer, and conveys real user stories that reveal customer insights.

Manifests insights into product truth, impact, and decisions.

Can as easily drive understanding of human mental models and emotional reactions as drive insight about UX and human/computer interactions

What does it take to be successful?

The desire to work closely with and across disciplines, working with designers, PMs (program managers), developers, other researchers, marketers, and engineers to generate insight, energy, and clarity in complex and ambiguous environments.

The ability to balance business motivations, technical possibilities, and end-user needs.

You have an entrepreneurial spirit and like to dig into and solve problems.

The ability to work with global partners in a hybrid setting (in person and remote)

Qualifications

7+ years of hands-on research and/or product planning experience, with demonstrated skill in collecting and analyzing human behavioral data to improve plans and UX in a technology industry setting

Either an MA/MS in psychology, market research, HCI, human factors, or other human research discipline, or statistics, Computer Science, or other quantitative discipline with an applied human behavior domain focus or a BA/BS in one of these fields with significant industry experience

Preferred Experiences Specific To This Job:
Experience with user or market research supporting artificial intelligence and/or service or cloud backed product development

Experience with user or market research supporting multi-app, multi-endpoint product development including PC, web, and mobile

Experience with user or market research on voice, natural language interactions, and multi-turn conversational commanding or assisting systems

Note: Your prior work experience, your demonstrated skill sets, and your demonstrated impact are far more important than your current title, level, or background. If you are interested and believe you can bring the skills and the thinking we need, please apply regardless of your level or experience.

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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. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

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