UX Researcher Job Description
A UX researcher job description template, plus the ATS keywords hiring teams screen for and why dedicated research headcount has gotten harder to find.
A UX Researcher plans and runs the studies — interviews, usability tests, surveys, diary studies — that tell a product team what's actually true about their users, as opposed to what the team assumes. The scope splits roughly into two modes: generative research that shapes a roadmap before anything is built, and evaluative research that checks whether a specific design works before it ships. Most roles do some of both; the ratio depends heavily on what stage the product is at.
It's worth being direct about a market dynamic that shapes this role more than almost any other in the product family: a lot of companies that had dedicated researchers a few years ago folded that work into product management and design instead, treating research as a skill any PM or designer should have rather than a specialist's job. That means fewer open UX Researcher reqs overall, and the ones that remain tend to skew senior — companies that kept a dedicated researcher usually kept them for the hardest, highest-stakes questions, and expect the person to demonstrate measurable influence on real decisions, not just a count of studies run.
That last point is the honest answer to the years-of-experience question for this role specifically. A resume listing fifty usability tests says almost nothing on its own. A resume listing five studies that changed or killed a roadmap bet says a great deal. If you're applying, lead with the decision the research changed, not the number of sessions it took to get there.
Halbrenn · Remote (US)
Full-time · Remote
$100,000 – $135,000
About the role
Halbrenn is hiring a UX Researcher to work across our operations platform's product squads — scheduling, dispatch and billing — as a research team of one. You'll set your own study calendar based on where the biggest open questions are, not just fill requests that land in a queue.
This is a fully remote (US) role, with occasional travel to Halbrenn offices for quarterly planning weeks. Most of our users are dispatchers and operations managers who are hard to reach through a generic research panel, so recruiting your own participants is a real, recurring part of the job rather than an occasional exception.
What you'll do
- Plan and run both generative research that shapes a roadmap and evaluative research that validates a specific design before it ships.
- Recruit and screen research participants yourself, including for a specialized business audience not reachable through a generic panel.
- Synthesize findings into something a PM or designer can act on that week, not a report that lands after the decision is already made.
- Partner with product and design early enough in a project to help shape the question being asked, not just answer whatever question shows up.
- Maintain a shared research repository so past findings don't get rediscovered from scratch every quarter.
- Run both moderated interviews and unmoderated remote testing, choosing the method that fits the question and the timeline.
- Track and report on the actual influence research had on shipped decisions, not just the number of studies run.
- Coach product and design partners to run their own lightweight research well, without it quietly replacing your role.
What we're looking for
- 3+ years running UX research inside a product organization, with studies you can point to that changed a real decision.
- Fluency in qualitative methods — interviews, usability testing, contextual inquiry — plus basic quantitative methods like surveys and usage-data analysis.
- Experience recruiting and screening your own participants for a specialized or B2B audience.
- Ability to synthesize and present findings clearly to people who weren't in the room, on a timeline that matches product decisions.
- Comfort operating without a large research team — this role is embedded across several product squads, not backed by a department.
- Strong written and verbal communication; a lot of this role's value is in how findings get delivered, not only how they're gathered.
Nice to have
- Experience researching for an operationally heavy or field-service B2B product.
- Familiarity with a research repository or insights tool such as Dovetail or an internal equivalent.
- Experience with unmoderated testing platforms such as UserTesting or Maze.
- A track record of teaching non-researchers to run lightweight studies well.
- Experience with quantitative or mixed-methods research, not only qualitative interviews.
Benefits
- Medical, dental and vision coverage, with employee premiums covered in full.
- 401(k) with a 4% company match, vested immediately.
- Fully remote (US), with travel covered for quarterly planning weeks.
- $1,000 home office stipend plus a $1,500 annual learning budget.
- Twenty days of paid time off plus company holidays.
Salary range
As posted for this sample role. Real pay varies by employer, location and experience.
$100,000–$135,000/ yr
ATS keywords for this role
The applicant tracking system (ATS) — the recruiting software a hiring team searches and filters applicants with — will screen for these. Weight shows how central each one is to this specific posting.
Required and central (3)
Important (7)
Mentioned in passing (8)
Frequently asked questions
Why are there fewer dedicated UX Researcher jobs than there used to be?
Over the last few years, many companies folded research into product and design roles rather than keeping a dedicated researcher — partly cost-cutting, partly a belief that any PM or designer can run "enough" research themselves. The dedicated headcount that remains tends to be concentrated at companies with harder or higher-stakes problems, and is measured more on demonstrable influence over decisions than on activity.
Do I need a PhD to be a UX Researcher?
No — most postings list a bachelor's degree, and that's genuinely sufficient for the bulk of applied industry research roles. A master's or PhD in HCI, psychology or a related field helps more for research-heavy, generative roles at larger organizations, but a strong portfolio of applied studies with real impact outweighs the credential in most hiring processes.
What's the difference between a UX Researcher and a PM who 'does research'?
A trained researcher brings study design, bias mitigation and synthesis discipline that a few customer calls doesn't replicate. But in practice, many companies now expect PMs and designers to do a lighter version of what a dedicated researcher used to own — and that blending is a direct cause of why dedicated researcher headcount has contracted industry-wide.
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