UX Researcher

Position:  UX Researcher

Salary: $120K - $130K/yr d.o.e.

Location: Remote OK - If living within 31 miles of Tustin, CA or Austin, TX will need to be able to work a hybrid schedule

Summary:  

The UX Researcher plays a critical role in shaping the future of New American Funding’s (NAF) digital experiences across lending, servicing, and operational platforms. This role unites mixed-methods research with next-generation AI automation, leveraging industry-leading platforms like FullStory, Figma, and Figma Make to accelerate discovery, amplify insight quality, and illuminate friction across the user journey. 

You will drive research strategy, influence product direction, and ensure customer needs remain at the center of every decision. This position is ideal for a researcher who thrives in complexity, communicates with clarity, and embraces emerging AI methods to push the research discipline forward. 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:   

1. Lead Research Initiatives 

1. Design and execute generative and evaluative research, including interviews, contextual inquiry, surveys, diary studies, concept evaluations, and usability testing. 

1. Identify user behaviors, motivations, breakdowns, and unmet needs across mortgage, servicing, banking, and operational workflows. 

1. AI-Driven Research & Automation 

1. Support NAF’s 2026 GenAI Research initiative by operationalizing automated research workflows. 

1. Use FullStory data exports and AI analytics to identify friction patterns, session clusters, rage clicks, abandonment points, and behavior anomalies. 

1. Generate research summaries, insight cards, personas, journey maps, usability tasks, and opportunity statements. 

1. Maintain and evolve research playbooks. 

1. Use LLM-powered synthesis for sentiment detection, affinity clustering, and thematic analysis. 

1. Synthesize & Communicate Insights 

1. Analyze data across qualitative and quantitative methods and translate findings into clear, actionable insights. 

1. Create compelling research reports, visual frameworks, journey maps, and executive-ready summaries that influence decision-making. 

1. Tell strong, persuasive research stories tailored for Product, Engineering, Design, and senior leadership. 

1. Frame Customer Needs Strategically 

1. Convert research findings into product opportunities, UX recommendations, and roadmap-shaping insights. 

1. Identify trends, whitespace opportunities, and system-level patterns across lines of business. 

1. Bring clarity to ambiguous problem spaces through structured frameworks and conceptual models. 

1. Advocate for Users Across the Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC). 

1. Champion inclusive, accessible, and human-centered design practices. 

1. Ensure insights are integrated throughout the Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC), especially during discovery. 

1. Provide evidence-based guidance that balances user needs with business and technical constraints. 

1. Collaborate Across Teams 

1. Work closely with Product Managers, Designers, Engineers, Analysts, Marketers, and fellow Researchers. 

1. Align research priorities with product goals, feature launches, and business outcomes. 

1. Facilitate workshops, critiques, and collaborative synthesis sessions. 

1. Measure Experience & Product Impact 

1. Define experience success metrics and evaluate how design solutions improve workflows, satisfaction, and business KPIs. 

1. Use behavioral analytics to quantify friction reduction and identify opportunities for optimization. 

1. Research Operations Excellence 

1. Manage participant recruitment, sampling strategy, scheduling, and logistics. 

1. Maintain clean, organized research repositories — including AI-generated insight libraries. 

1. Uphold ethical research practices, data privacy standards, and compliance requirements. 

1. Create scalable, repeatable research processes and contribute to a mature research practice. 

1. Mentor & Practice Development 

1. Support team maturity by sharing research best practices, methods, and tools. 

1. Contribute to the evolution of research frameworks, AI automation workflows, and PDLC standards. 

Required: 

• 7+ years of experience as a UX Researcher or similar applied research role 

• Experience executing a broad range of qualitative and quantitative research methods 

• Strong synthesis, analysis, and research storytelling skills 

• Proven success in influencing product strategy and cross-functional teams 

• Ability to independently manage multiple projects in a fast-paced environment 

• Familiarity with research tools for recruiting, remote testing, analysis, and repositories 

• Understanding of accessibility standards, ethical research, and data privacy requirements 

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and organizational skills 

• Experience working on complex workflows, enterprise products, or transactional platforms 

Preferred (AI & Automation Experience) 

• Experience with Fullstory, Maze or similar behavior analytics tools 

• Experience with Figma, Figma Make, or research AI workflows 

• Exposure to GenAI tools for clustering, summarization, sentiment analysis, or synthesis 

• Comfortable designing prompts or creating AI-assisted research pipelines 

• Experience integrating insights into PDLC, design systems, or cross-functional planning 

Core Traits: 

• Curious, analytical, and systems-oriented 

• Comfortable with ambiguity and iterative discovery 

• Strong advocate for users and human-centered design 

• Detail-oriented and operationally rigorous 

• Collaborative, empathetic communicator 

• Passionate about AI-assisted research and advancing team capabilities 

Work Authorization: Must be able to verify identity and employment eligibility to work in the U.S.

Other Duties: This job profile is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of job duties and responsibilities, as one may perform additional related duties as assigned in order to meet the needs of the organization.

Physical Demands: The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Must be able to lift up to ten pounds. Primary functions require sufficient physical ability and mobility to work in an office setting; to stand or sit for prolonged periods of time; to occasionally stoop, bend, kneel, crouch, reach, and twist; to lift, carry, push, and/or pull light to moderate amounts of weight; to operate office equipment requiring repetitive hand movement and fine coordination including use of a keyboard; and to verbally communicate to exchange information. VISION: See in the normal visual range with or without correction. HEARING: Hear in the normal audio range with or without correction.

[EOE/M/F/D/V. Drug-free workplace.]

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