Director of User Experience Research

Yahoo is a global media and tech company that connects people to their passions. We reach nearly 900M people around the world, bringing them closer to what they love-from finance and sports, to shopping, gaming and news-with the trusted products, content and tech that fuel their day. For partners, we provide a full-stack platform for businesses to amplify growth and drive more meaningful connections across advertising, search and media.
Yahoo is a global media and tech company that connects people to their passions. We reach nearly 900M people around the world, bringing them closer to what they love-from finance and sports, to shopping, gaming and news-with the trusted products, content and tech that fuel their day. For partners, we provide a full-stack platform for businesses to amplify growth and drive more meaningful connections across advertising, search and media.
A Little About Us
Yahoo is a values-led company committed to building brands people love. We reach nearly a billion people around the world with a dynamic house of 50+ media and technology brands. A global leader in digital, Yahoo is shaping the future of media.
The Ad Tech User Experience organization is made up of an inclusive team of Designers, Researchers, and Writers who are passionate about building beautiful experiences that work well for the people who use our products and services. We believe deeply in the power of a user-centered process to inform the direction of our designs, products, and services, and businesses.
We design and build the products and services that help marketers, publishers, and developers to build more meaningful connections with their audience and grow through unique insights. Our products include measurement and analytics tools for app developers, marketing management tools for most of the largest brands in the world, revenue management for some of the most visited websites on the internet, and monetizable consumer experiences that reach nearly a billion people across the globe.
A Little About the Role
In this role, you will drive the overall user research strategy and roadmap for our suite of Advertiser, Developer, and Publisher products while also coaching and mentoring a team of high-performing User Researchers. As the User Experience Research leader, you'll champion people-centered experiences that bridge the gap between our users, UX team, product managers, and engineers. You'll be involved in every phase of the product development lifecycle and will collaborate and partner with cross-functional stakeholders at every level. You will help to inform and inspire the direction of our products and services through a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and will be responsible for driving research initiatives from inception through execution and evaluation. You'll set the bar for user research within the company and inspire your team to push the boundaries of what is possible. Moreover, you'll be responsible for guiding the career development of your team members and helping them to maximize their potential.
A Lot About You
You have a strong User Experience Research background and passion for creating beautiful products that work well. You thrive on collaborating with cross-functional peers to bring clarity to ambiguous product, design, and research challenges. You have proven experience taking broad concepts and turning them into something that is useful, valuable, and delightful to users. You want to play a key role in developing and executing a research strategy around user-centered design initiatives, mixing business and user goals to create awesome experiences for our users. You love communicating and are versed in the storytelling of a user-first approach. Moreover, you revel in solving complex problems and can excel in an inclusive environment that fosters diverse perspectives.
Your Day-to-Day

• Define the short term and long term user research vision for our product suite. Create quarterly objectives and define key results (OKRs) for the team. Drive the long term vision by defining a roadmap and implementation/adoption strategy.
• Grow the user research team through mentorship, visioning, and team development.
• Lead research innovation and effectively communicate your vision and influence your partner teams to align to the vision.
• Collaborate with a cross-functional team that is spread out across the US and globally. Identify key business and user experience opportunities and drive consensus within a diverse team of stakeholders.
• Build a strong user research culture within the greater organization by establishing best practices and promoting research to counterparts in engineering, product and UX.
• Ensure work across the team is of the highest quality and the implemented experiences accurately reflect the vision and strategy.

Minimum Qualifications

• Strong academic and professional user research background and passion for creating beautiful products that work well. You have experience driving user research across a portfolio of products.
• Enough professional experience that you thrive in the face of ambiguity and complexity and know how to get things done across a globally distributed environment. You have excellent communication skills across all mediums with the proven ability to influence a diverse set of stakeholders and executives. Your teammates and cross-functional partners love collaborating with you!
• Experience creating a roadmap and driving it to implementation/adoption across multiple teams and products. You have set quarterly key objectives for your team and been responsible for their successful execution. Your team also sets their own quarterly key objectives and you have coached them to success.
• Solid craftspersonship: skilled in both the theory and practice of user research, up-to-date on qualitative and quantitative methodologies, able to differentiate between trends and emerging best practices, and a firm understanding of user-centered design and when to apply different tools and processes to achieve a great outcome.
• You are passionate and enthusiastic about leadership and the impact servant leaders can have on a researcher's career. You have experience leading teams for multiple years and have coached high performing, high impact researchers to success.
• Strong communication and storytelling skills with the ability to distill complex findings and present actionable insights to stakeholders at every level.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree or PhD in a related field
• Previous experience crafting and growing a research portfolio across desktop and mobile. Ideally, you have been responsible for multiple products and managed multiple, simultaneous work streams. You have driven efforts to consolidate multiple products into a more streamlined set of user experiences.
• Experience building the user research function from the ground up. You have crafted and executed a plan to establish and mature the group into a high performing organization.
• Experience conducting research within the B2B, Cloud, Enterprise, or Advertising domains

Yahoo is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, and will not be discriminated against based on age, race, gender, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability or any other protected category. Yahoo is dedicated to providing an accessible environment for all candidates during the application process and for employees during their employment. If you need accessibility assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability, please submit a request via the Accommodation Request Form ( www.yahooinc.com/careers/contact-us.html ) or call 408-336-1409. Requests and calls received for non-disability related issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.
At Yahoo, we know that diversity makes us stronger. We are committed to a collaborative, inclusive environment that encourages authenticity and fosters a sense of belonging. We strive for everyone to feel valued, connected, and empowered to reach their potential and contribute their best. Check out our diversity and inclusion ( www.yahooinc.com/diversity/ ) page to learn more.
US Only: Please be aware that Yahoo requires all employees entering a U.S. Yahoo office and/or attending a company event (including client events) are required to be vaccinated for COVID-19. This position will require the successful candidate to obtain and show proof of a vaccination to enter a U.S. Yahoo office and/or attending a company event (including client events). Yahoo is an equal opportunity employer, and will provide reasonable accommodation to those individuals who are unable to be vaccinated consistent with federal, state, and local law.
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