Lead User Researcher

Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of digital currency and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle platforms and products provide a suite of internet-native financial services for payments, treasury infrastructure and capital formation. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin (USDC), which has become the fastest growing dollar digital currency in the world. USDC has grown to over 44+ billion in circulation and supported over $1.7+ trillion in transactions in the past year. Circle’s payments and treasury infrastructure services available through the Circle Account and APIs helps bridge the legacy financial system and digital currency and blockchain based finance. Combined, Circle’s suite of services helps companies to participate in a more open, global and inclusive financial system.

What you’ll be part of:

With the mission “To raise global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of value,” Circle was founded on the belief that the internet, blockchains and digital currency will rewire the global economic system, creating a fundamentally more open, inclusive, efficient and integrated world economy. We envision a global economy where people and businesses everywhere can more freely connect and transact with each other with new technologies for digital money and internet-native finance. We believe such a system can raise prosperity for people and companies everywhere. Our mission is powered by the values we espouse and which we expect all Circlers to respect. We are Multistakeholder, serving the needs of our customers, our shareholders, our employees and families, our local communities and our world. Furthermore, we are also Mindful, Driven by Excellence, and High Integrity.

What you’ll be responsible for:
Circle is growing its research practice and looking for a Lead or Principal User Researcher to deeply understand the people who will use our products and glean insights to drive product direction and strategy. You’ll help paint a full picture of our users and their needs through strong partnerships with product management, design, engineering, data science, product marketing, and customer support. You’ll own research strategy and related activities, guide our solutions to help thousands of businesses to delight millions of end-users around the world.

What you'll work on:

• Developing an understanding of people, their journeys, and their needs in the rapidly changing web 3, crypto and blockchain problem space.
• Building our user research culture; Evangelizing research as a core tenet in product decisions and how we build products.
• Collaborating across many teams at Circle to marry qualitative and quantitative data, providing a vision of users needs.
• Generate insights that shape how product teams think about medium and long-term product strategy.
• Crafting and elevating narratives to build empathy so the user is always in mind when decisions are made throughout the organization.
• Acting as a thought leader in the domain of research, while advocating for the people who could use our products.
• Contributing to a growing UX org, helping install best practices and processes as we scale, and filling out our product squads’ research toolbox with methodologies.

You will aspire to our four core values:

• Multistakeholder - you have dedication and commitment to our customers, shareholders, employees, and families and local communities.
• Mindful - you seek to be respectful, an active listener and to pay attention to detail.
• Driven by Excellence - you are driven by our mission and our passion for customer success which means you relentlessly pursue excellence, that you do not tolerate mediocrity and you work intensely to achieve your goals.
• High Integrity - you seek open and honest communication, and you hold yourself to very high moral and ethical standards. You reject manipulation, dishonesty, and intolerance.

What you’ll bring to Circle:

• Lead User Researcher

• 7+ years of user research experience in an applied research setting, or similar
• Translate insights to future strategic implications for the business
• Own and drive end to end research plan and execution from business and stakeholders questions and hypothesis
• Act as thought partner in aligning key stakeholders to user needs
• Inform roadmaps by highlighting key people needs and balancing with business priorities
• Ability to handle complex information and adapt to a changing environment
• Lead across cross-functional stakeholders to drive business impact
• Evangelize research results to cross-functional stakeholders via storytelling to facilitate clear product directions
• Experience in solving and simplifying service design challenges for complex task-based workflows
• Research mentorship and guidance for fellow researchers, designers, and product management peers
• Enhance existing ways of doing research
• Bachelors, Masters, or PhD in human behavior related fields (Computer Science, HCI, Experimental Psychology, Sociology, Information Science, Economics, Political Science, Mathematics, etc.)

• Principal User Researcher

• 12+ years of user research experience in an applied research setting, or similar
• Understand trends and issues shaping the future of the industry to drive and contribute to the future vision
• Proactively identify opportunities for research and own the execution
• Evangelize user needs to align key stakeholders
• Impact and drive roadmaps by articulating key people's needs. Identify new opportunity spaces.
• Navigate complex information and adapt to a changing environment
• Lead across cross-functional stakeholders to drive business impact
• Evangelize research results across cross-functional stakeholders via storytelling to land desirable product directions
• Experience in solving and simplifying service design challenges for complex task-based workflows
• Research mentorship and guidance for fellow researchers, designers, and product management peers
• Contribute to new ways of doing research
• Bachelors, Masters, or PhD in human behavior related fields (Computer Science, HCI, Experimental Psychology, Sociology, Information Science, Economics, Political Science, Mathematics, etc.).

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at Circle. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.