At Medium, as our team’s first user researcher, you will have the opportunity to dig deep into questions that will impact how we build a better product for the millions of people who find wisdom, community, and take part in thoughtful discussions on Medium.

We’d love to hear more about your experiences as a researcher working with product teams and equipping them with insights to make better decisions. How has your research informed product decisions? What sorts of findings have enabled your colleagues to make better choices, or explore different paths? Your depth of experiences, your hunger to have impact on a product used by a wide and diverse community of readers, writers, and editors, and your drive toward defining and achieving successful outcomes will be your strengths.

Key Responsibilities

You will be an integral part of the Engineering, Design, and Product organization at Medium. Reporting to the Head of Design, you will work across the company with product managers, designers, data scientists and our content team to embed and support research practices in our product development processes.

You will conduct research, enable others to conduct research, socialize findings, influence roadmaps, and help ensure we are shipping the highest quality experiences possible. You will be a champion of the customer voice within Medium, making sure that what we build adds value to our community.

In this role you will be able to leverage both your knowledge of research operations and your experience as a research practitioner to lay the foundations for future research practices at Medium. You will execute studies across a variety of methodologies as well as provide mentorship and direction to other colleagues conducting research. You will also help teams develop strategic research plans to help answer our most pressing questions.

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

• 6+ years experience with a variety of qualitative and quantitative research techniques, along with the knowledge of how and why to apply them. Creative approaches to research (and knowing when to use them) are highly appreciated.
• You can demonstrate experience with research at every step of the product development cycle, with results that inform both strategic and tactical decisions. Skills include identifying needs, defining goals and objectives, developing scripts or interview guides, recruiting participants, conducting fieldwork, analyzing results, and sharing insights with teams and stakeholders.
• You enjoy the hands-on parts of your job, including research operations, scaling research practices across a company, socializing results, and building pathways for research findings to be applied in the product.
• Your work has had substantial impact on a consumer-facing or community-oriented product. You are adept at building energy and consensus around your findings.
• You care a lot about the accurate and diverse representation of our customer perspectives.
• Ability to negotiate both quantitative and qualitative results to deliver deeper insights and a broader understanding of how people use Medium.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills. Can easily relay the larger “why” behind your work, as well as the “how” and “what”
• Excellent project management skills. You’re self-motivated and can balance autonomy with collaboration. You enjoy and excel at remote work.
• You show initiative, optimizing for product results.
• Experience conducting research in a fast-paced, multi-team environment
• You have experience navigating ambiguity and urgency. You know when to roll up your sleeves and dive in as well as when to take a step back and ensure we’re headed in the right direction.
• You’ve used and know Medium well.
• You can attend and engage in offsite events to support organizational goals and enhance team dynamics (traveling may be required).

Bonus:

• Prior experience starting and scaling a research practice at a company
• Experience establishing and analyzing UX metrics

Benefits

In addition to the new skills you’ll pick up, here’s what else you’ll enjoy by working at Medium:

• Working with a fully distributed team: We’re totally remote and have teammates across the U.S. & France
• Generous benefits that support your wellness and professional development
• 100% covered Medical benefits for employees and 70% for dependents
• Generous parental leave policy & tutoring services through Outschool
• Mental health support through Talkspace
• Stipends for Wellness, Co-working, Learning and your home office/wifi
• Unlimited PTO and standard company holidays