Lead Design Researcher, Xero
Fixed Term
+ Employee Share Plan
Accounting software for small businesses
Be an early applicant
Accounting software for small businesses
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
+ Employee Share Plan
1001+ employees
Company mission
To make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world.
Role
Who you are
- A degree or training in a Design Research course — or equivalent work experience
- A portfolio of work that demonstrates high-quality and influential communication of insights, highlighting the business impact and taking ownership of reaching business outcomes
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to articulate design decisions and influence product strategy
- A deep understanding of user-centred design principles and a passion for creating intuitive and engaging experiences
- Proven experience coaching and mentoring design teams, fostering a collaborative and high-performing environment
- Ideally, experience working in a fast paced, agile product environment
- Research has shown that women and underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single competency or experience . If you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. You could be just the right person for this role and Xero
What the job involves
- As a Lead UX Researcher, you’ll shape and lead impactful qualitative and quantitative research programs that connect cross-functional & senior stakeholders to key customer challenges
- Through understanding Xero’s competitive landscape and weaving together connections across studies and customer journey stages, you’ll deliver clear insights and recommendations that inspire change and ensure Xero’s strategies are grounded in a deep understanding of our customers
- This is a fixed term role for 12 months
- Qualitative research - You'll make use of a broad range of qualitative methods on large and complex projects
- You’ll design and conduct effective interviews to uncover rich, meaningful insights and generate informative data
- Quantitative Research - Bringing years of experience on complex quantitative studies, you’re confident crafting insightful surveys and harnessing data to recognise trends
- Process & planning - Leveraging your strong planning skills, you’ll prioritise tasks, manage constraints, communicate progress, proactively manage change, and mitigate issues
- Scoping work - You’ll proactively seek to understand the business context and interrogate research requests in order to pragmatically apply the appropriate research approach
- Data analysis and interpretation - You’re skilled in identifying patterns, interpreting findings and generating new hypotheses
- Collaborating across teams, you'll connect data and draw holistic conclusions
- Communicate and influence - You'll craft concise, compelling presentations and confidently deliver clear, actionable recommendations that influence senior stakeholders and shape roadmaps and strategy
- Practice improvement - You'll lead initiatives to improve the research practice. Advocating for research across the organisation, you’ll build capability beyond the team, and champion ethical and inclusive research
Our take
For a long time, high-quality financial services have been reserved for large-scale businesses. Xero solves this problem by giving small businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers access to best-in-class finance and accounting solutions.
Xero is one of the largest companies of its kind, with its promise to save time and effort for small business owners - who often don’t have in-house accounting teams - capturing interest and allowing the company to scale. It has a strong rival in Intuit QuickBooks, which offers similar services, but competes by being most effective for growing startups, and having an incredibly simple user experience.
A series of acquisitions and partnerships, including the purchase of Instafile in 2018, have consolidated Xero’s market share. The company continues to add new integrations, such as with Vehocheck Workshop Manager, and the 2023 launched Beautiful Business Fund that will help small businesses accelerate growth.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company HQ
Te Aro, Wellington, Wellington
Leadership
Prior to Xero, she founded Boardlist and Joyus. She also served as the CEO of Polyvore and as a President of Asia Pacific and Latin America Operations at Google.
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