Product Research Lead

About the role

Running a company changes with scale. At a small business, one person may handle payroll, onboarding, and IT. In the mid-market, those jobs become handoffs across teams and systems. At enterprise scale, policies, entities, and exceptions multiply. AI raises a new question across all three: which parts of the work can software take on, and where do people need to stay in control? Product Research works before decisions are made. As Product Research Lead, you will help shape Rippling’s point of view on where the product should go next, across new products, categories, customer segments, and AI-native ways of working. Your scope will include foundational HR systems and the realities of hourly and complex workforces. The questions will often be broad, the product direction unresolved, and the implications larger than a single feature or team. This is a lead-level individual contributor role. You will personally lead research, develop a grounded point of view, and write for product and company leaders. You will work with product, design, engineering, and data partners to help teams choose a direction and understand the evidence behind it. This is a strategic role for someone who wants to influence company direction, define emerging product opportunities, and help determine how AI will reshape the way businesses operate.

Responsibilities

• Frame important questions before a solution or roadmap is defined, then design research that can change the decision.
• Learn how companies actually operate: the people, systems, rules, incentives, and workarounds behind a customer need.
• Find and recruit the people best positioned to answer or challenge the question, including participants who are hard to reach.
• Use sourcing and screening to learn about the market.
• Conduct rigorous qualitative research and combine it with behavioral data, market evidence, competitive context, and product knowledge when the question calls for it.
• Find patterns in messy evidence, test your interpretation against exceptions, and explain what you know, what remains uncertain, and why it matters.
• Identify which jobs matter enough for customers to change their behavior or adopt a new product.
• Translate that understanding into choices about which customer to serve, what opportunity to pursue, and what must be true for a solution to work.
• Write and present a clear main judgment for the audience and decision at hand.
• Show what you mean through concrete customer behavior, with deeper evidence ready when needed.
• Build trust with partners, challenge assumptions