Fast Facts
Join Macmillan Learning as a User Experience Researcher, where you'll play a crucial role in advancing educational solutions through user research, collaboration, and innovative design strategies.
Responsibilities: Manage UX research operations, drive user research lifecycle, synthesize insights for product improvement, and mentor junior researchers.
Skills: 5+ years of hands-on user research experience, expertise in qualitative and quantitative methodologies, exceptional collaboration, and communication skills.
Qualifications: Bachelor's Degree in human-centered design or related field; Master's degree preferred; experience in agile software development is a plus.
Location: Location: United States (remote employment eligible excluding certain states)
Compensation: $80000 - $115000 / Annually
At Macmillan Learning, we're committed to driving innovation that transforms education. We seek team members who thrive on pushing boundaries, envisioning future possibilities, and building solutions that make a lasting impact. Whether you're a Pioneer shaping bold new ideas, a Builder turning possibilities into reality, or a Stabilizer optimizing for success, you'll play a vital role in advancing our mission. If you're excited by the prospect of testing new technologies, implementing transformative strategies, and thriving in a fast-paced, innovative environment, we’d love to hear from you!
The User Experience Researcher supports Macmillan Learning's ideation and development of digital resources guided by findings and data from their research. This role, along with a UX Designer counterpart, is responsible for the entire product life cycle, starting with problem discovery and definition, through conceptual design, testing, and collaboration with our technology teams to implementation. This role works with a team of researchers and coordinators to produce generative and evaluative insights that advise our product vision and delivery. This role partners with UX designers, product managers, learning and impact researchers, and data scientists to turn research into measurable user insights.
We know that talented candidates sometimes hesitate to apply when they don't meet every single qualification listed. We encourage you to apply if you're excited about this role and believe you can contribute meaningfully to our team, even if your background doesn't align perfectly with every requirement. We're looking for people who are passionate about our mission and can bring valuable perspectives to our work. Different experiences, skills, and approaches all have the potential to strengthen what we do. If this opportunity interests you, we'd love to hear how your unique background and abilities could contribute to our team's success. We're committed to building a workplace where everyone can do their best work and where diverse viewpoints are valued. We encourage all qualified candidates to apply - we're excited to learn about the different ways you might add value to our organization.
Major responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
Manage UX Research Operations
- Define and maintain standards for UX research.
- Establish and track progress on research goals.
- Plan and design user research of all types, both generative and evaluative.
- Drive the end-to-end user research lifecycle for certain projects, including selection of methods that align with research questions and business goals.
- Design and analyze qualitative studies that find opportunities by way of meaningful insights.
- Helping to shape the vision to transform UX Research for Macmillan Learning across the entire educational ecosystem.
- Leading end-to-end product design initiatives, from early problem discovery through solution design, prototyping, and testing.
- Support technical leads and developers by providing functional clarification and setting expectations with teammates and stakeholders.
Lead and Conduct User-centered Design Research
- Lead and provide insight to the product and learning research team to deeply understand business and learning needs and influence the ultimate goals and strategy of our products.
- Identify product improvement opportunities by synthesizing multiple sources of information (field work, interviews, quantitative data mining, market literature, etc.).
- Synthesize research to frame problems, uncover insights, and tell stories that build alignment and buy-in with your team and stakeholders.
- Establish research tools, standards, frameworks to level up the team’s ability to conduct, communicate, and catalog quality research.
Develop Research Strategy
- Establish strategic research goals that will help us identify unmet user needs, learning needs, market trends, and new business opportunities.
- Innovate methods for sharing research insights that democratize research by making insights easily available across the organization in ways that foster a human-centered culture across the organization.
- Build organizational understanding of the value realized by building products on user research, learning research, and impact research as an integrated whole.
UX Research Mentorship and Leadership
- Plan with fellow researchers in learning research, impact research, data science, editorial, and marketing to build and foster a research culture that impacts the organization as a whole.
- Coach and mentor researchers on your team.
- Provide ongoing education on user research to our company.
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree in human-centered design, psychology, anthropology, sociology or a similar field
- 5+ years of hands-on experience performing user research.
- Expertise in unmoderated and moderated studies, and knowledge of basic quantitative methodologies.
- Attention to detail and multi-tasking capabilities.
- Ability to mentor junior UX Researchers.
- Experience facilitating cross-functional working sessions and/or workshops with peers and partners.
- Exceptional understanding of fundamental research principles.
- Experience conducting user research, including interviews, usability testing, and writing surveys.
- Strong ability to collaborate effectively and efficiently with team members from multiple groups to accomplish goals
Preferred Qualifications:
- Master's degree in human-centered design, psychology, anthropology, sociology or a similar field.
- Proven track record uncovering, synthesizing, and distributing impactful insights that advised product strategy and decisions.
- Evidence of building shared alignment across departments, disciplines, and teams.
- Ability to distill complex problems into clean and intuitive design solutions.
- Excellent communication and mentoring skills.
- Experience in agile software development.
- Ability to operate in a fast-paced technical environment.
- Passionate about exploring the future of AI, staying up-to-date on new platforms, trends, and capabilities.
Salary Range: $80,000 - $115,000
Exemption Status: Exempt
Physical Requirements:
Must be able to work in fast paced, open office environment, must be able to multi-task, and must be able to travel occasionally; work overtime - more than 40 hours a week, as needed.
The position is eligible for remote employment, excluding the following locations: Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming.
Benefits
Regular full-time and qualifying part-time employees and their dependents are eligible for Macmillan benefits, effective on the employee’s date of hire. Macmillan also offers health benefits coverage to qualifying same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners (may require additional documentation) of active employees.
- Competitive pay and bonus plan
- Generous Health Benefits (Medical, Dental, Vision)
- Contributions to your 401k retirement account through Fidelity
- Generous paid time off, sick time, floating holidays, and paid holidays (Spring Reset Day , Juneteenth, Indigenous People's Day, Election Day, and more!)
- Employee Assistance Program, Education Assistance Program
- 100% employer-paid life and AD&D insurance
- And much more!
Macmillan Learning is a privately-held, family owned company that improves lives through learning. By linking research to learning practice, we develop pioneering products and learning materials for students that are highly effective and drive improved outcomes. Our engaging content is developed in partnership with the world's best researchers, educators, administrators, and developers. To learn more, please visit macmillanlearning.com or see us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or join our Macmillan Community. Macmillan Learning is a division of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a family-owned global media company headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany.
At Macmillan Learning, we believe diverse perspectives and backgrounds enrich our mission to improve lives through learning. We actively seek candidates who reflect a wide range of identities, experiences, and communities. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, disability status, physical ability, neurodiversity, genetic information, protected veteran status, family and economic status and background, geographical status and background, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. You can read more about our Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion initiatives here.
The successful candidate for this position will be an employee of Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group, LLC d/b/a Macmillan Learning. Bedford Freeman & Worth Publishing Group, LLC has developed an affirmative action program in compliance with the NY Department of Education’s guidance. Portions of the affirmative action program are available for review by applicants and employees by contacting Human Resources at Macmillan Learning.
