Senior UX Researcher, Design Strategy, XR

Applicants in San Francisco and Los Angeles County: Qualified applications with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with local Fair Chance ordinances and the California Fair Chance Act.

This role may be located in San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; Los Angeles, CA; or New York, NY.

About the role

As a User Experience Researcher (UXR) at Google, you’ll join a multi-disciplinary UX team, collaborating with Engineering and Product Management to gather insights and create industry-leading products. You’ll play a critical role in understanding user needs and driving impact at all stages of product development, ensuring products are useful, usable, and helpful. You’ll explore user behaviors and motivations through primary research methods such as field studies, interviews, diary studies, ethnography, surveys, usability testing, and logs analysis. You’ll also grow within a supportive UXR community offering mentorship, regular meetups, and exclusive internal tools.

Google's XR team is at the forefront of the next major leap—the convergence of AI and XR. This initiative aims to reimagine how we interact with the world by building lightweight XR devices like smart glasses and headsets paired with helpful AI to augment human intelligence, offering personalized, conversational, and contextually aware experiences.

Responsibilities

• Provide user-centered insights to inform near and long-term product strategy and roadmap development.
• Conduct research to inform product-market fit and value propositions, drive strategic research perspectives across teams, and identify future opportunities for product teams.
• Deploy creative and co-design research methods to inform north star experiences.
• Develop and maintain a prioritized research roadmap aligned with product strategy and business goals.
• Design for scale and systems through research programs such as critical user journeys (CUJs).

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 6 years of experience in an applied research setting (e.g., product or academic), or similar.
• Experience with research methods (e.g., usability studies, contextual inquiries, 1:1 interviews, unmoderated research studies).
• Experience with design strategy and product definition research.
• Experience creating research programs such as critical user journeys.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree or PhD in Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Statistics, Psychology, Anthropology, or a related field.
• 5 years of experience conducting UX research on products and working with executive leadership (e.g., Director level and above).
• 3 years of experience managing projects and working in a large, matrixed organization.
• Experience conducting research with emerging technologies and devices (e.g., VR headsets, smartphones, wearables).
• Experience partnering closely with cross-functional teams.
• Applied experience conducting research in AR/VR product environments, Android systems, system UI, or app scaling.

Pay

Individual pay is determined by job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. US-based roles: $159,000 - $230,000 (USD) + 15% bonus target + equity + benefits.

Benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.