Senior Design Researcher

Our financial client is looking for a Senior Design Researcher to join their team for 12 months, full-time hours, starting in December/January 2025. You will be supporting product owners and members of the design team to ensure that their product strategy and feature designs align with user goals and needs. The research will inform the design and implementation of new web-based applications. This role is hybrid, 2-3 days in their downtown Toronto office.

What you'll be doing as the Senior Design Researcher in this role:
- Proactively identifying opportunities for research to inform product strategy and design decisions, and create alignment around those opportunities and results. 
- Conducting generative and evaluative research with business banking clients. 
- Representing the voice and needs of their users. 
- Designing and facilitating internal workshops to gather information about new work or areas of focus. 
- Managing multiple research activities by effectively prioritizing and communicating those priorities and their implications with peers and partners. 
- Planning and managing a small research budget over the course of a year. 

Experience and Skills: 
- 7+ years of experience in a research related role. 
- Comfort in leading both generative and evaluative research independently and with limited guidance (experience conducting research in a B2B setting strongly preferred, but not required). 
- Ability to proactively identify opportunities for research based on the product strategy and roadmap. 
- Ability to collaborate and build relationships with cross-functional partners (Product, Tech, Business, Marketing, etc.) across seniority levels in a matrixed organization. 
- Ability to think both at the strategic level to inform the trajectory of the business, and at the tactical level to inform day-to-day product and design decisions. 
- Strong storytelling skills to bring research findings to life in a way that is meaningful to and appropriate for a specific audience. 
- Patience to guide other researchers and designers in developing their research skills so that they can take on more research activities over time. 

Tools: Alida, Maze, Fable, Figma, Mural (or similar tools)

In this position, you may have access to client or customer systems, confidential and/or proprietary information or data, including financial information. This position is onsite and requires you to work closely with other individuals in a collaborative team environment.

Benefits

Employer is willing to sponsor qualified candidates for a non-immigrant work visa.