Lead UX Researcher

Role overview

Lead UX Researcher for the Wikimedia Foundation’s UX Research team. You will lead mixed-methods research for the “Increase our Reach” focus area and partner with product, design, data science, engineering, and fellow researchers to identify high-impact research opportunities and execute studies that inform strategy and product decisions.

Responsibilities

• Lead qualitative and quantitative UX research studies that inform product teams on the right products and features for the right users.
• Proactively identify, define, and secure buy-in for strategic research projects.
• Communicate findings and recommendations clearly and persuasively to stakeholders.
• Act as a trusted thought partner for cross-functional leads; support adoption of research-based human-centered recommendations.
• Consolidate, analyze, and synthesize existing knowledge to inform planning and strategy discussions.
• Evolve UX research best practices and improve team processes.
• Mentor more junior individual contributors and guide the work of contractors.
• Document and publicly communicate research processes/results with the Wikimedia community.

Research focus (examples)

• Mixed-methods work for audience expansion, including “Beyond Wiki” audiences (non-users, lapsed users, and users interacting via other platforms such as AI chatbots).
• Understanding how Wikipedia results are perceived in search engine and AI chatbot contexts.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of designs for attributing Wikipedia content in those contexts.
• Informing future audience experiments in new formats (e.g., games, personalized content creation, emerging platforms).

Requirements

• 6+ years of UX research experience in a product organization, with a proven record of leading impactful projects in fast-paced environments.
• Deep expertise in qualitative methods (e.g., interviews, contextual inquiry, diary studies).
• Ability to conduct quantitative research end-to-end (e.g., surveys, large-scale unmoderated testing, large-scale diary studies, quantitative UX benchmarking).
• Strong experimental design skills and ability to perform statistical analysis.
• Ability to translate insights into actionable recommendations with product teams.
• Master’s or PhD in HCI, Cognitive Science, Statistics, Behavioral Economics, Linguistics, Psychology, Anthropology, or a related field.

Additional expectations

• Work with stakeholders across time zones; availability for synchronous work between 15:00–19:00 UTC.
• Willingness to travel up to four times per year.