Senior Design Researcher

Role overview

Hudl is hiring a Senior Design Researcher for its Hardware business unit, focused on defining the future of automated capture and wearable technology. You’ll serve as the research expert, blending methodological expertise across hardware and software with leadership to connect customer insights directly to product outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Lead hardware research while staying embedded within product teams.
• Stay close to customers through interviews, usability studies, and field research.
• Apply qualitative and quantitative methods to uncover deep user needs across hardware/software contexts.
• Set high research quality standards and elevate rigor.
• Build team capability by creating research plans, mentoring other designers, and sharing best practices.
• Use AI to accelerate synthesis and pattern recognition to shorten the feedback loop from research to product direction.
• Partner with Product Managers and designers to define right-sized research objectives.
• Present findings through compelling storytelling and clear metrics for multiple audiences.

Must-haves

• 5+ years of experience as a design researcher in tech.
• Demonstrated ability to connect insights to design outcomes.
• Strong ability to extract critical context about users, environments, and tasks; accountability for how insights drive design decisions.
• AI-fluent: practical point of view on using AI-assisted research tools while maintaining rigor.
• Excellent communication, visualization, and storytelling skills.
• Travel up to 20%, domestically and internationally.
• Hardware research background across methodologies for hardware/software, consumer electronics, and/or hard goods.
• Strong qualitative and quantitative skills, including experience with focus groups, interviews, usability testing, field studies, and prototype evaluations.

Nice-to-haves

• Advanced degree in HCI, Human Factors, Cognitive Psychology, or related field.
• Prior experience with software product teams and knowledge of digital product research needs.

Location / remote

• Preferred: candidates near Hudl offices in Lincoln and Omaha.
• Open to remote candidates in Kansas City, Chicago, Austin, or Dallas.