Principal UX Researcher (Viator)

Viator, a Tripadvisor company, is the leading marketplace for travel experiences. We believe that making memories is what travel is all about and with 300,000 plus travel experiences to explore - everything from simple tours to extreme adventures (and all the niche, interesting stuff in between) - making memories that will last a lifetime has never been easier. With industry-leading flexibility and last-minute availability it's never too late to make any day extraordinary.

The Viator research team is seeking a highly experienced and strategically-minded Principal UX Researcher to champion user-centered design and drive significant business impact. In this collaborative role, you'll lead complex research initiatives, leveraging advanced qualitative and quantitative methodologies to uncover deep user insights and underlying drivers of user behaviour to shape the long-term product vision. You'll be a passionate advocate for our customers, translating nuanced behaviours into actionable recommendations and opportunities that directly influence design and product strategy. As a leader within the team, you will challenge core business assumptions and will proactively collaborate with senior stakeholders to define and champion product roadmaps that are rigorously informed by data and a comprehensive understanding of our customers.

The right candidate will have 8+ years of applied qualitative and quantitative research experience in a professional setting. They will be passionate about research and travel, comfortable in a fast-moving organisation and excited to collaborate with a diverse set of skilled cross-functional partners. If you’re passionate about UX research and like seeing your efforts translated into real-world impact, we want you on our team.

Specific Responsibilities Include:

• Strategic research leadership: Rigorously designing and executing high-impact research studies across large, complex and ambiguous problem spaces.
• Problem definition and scoping: Excelling at synthesizing and triangulating a wide variety of data inputs (analytics, VoC, user research, market research, competitive intelligence) to inform problem definition and shape the most critical questions to answer to drive strategic growth.
• Impactful insights and innovation: Generating transformative insights that challenge core business assumptions. You will uncover deep, systemic issues and underlying drivers of user behaviour, often revealing interconnected problems and opportunities.
• Influential communication and presentation: Using creative storytelling techniques and compelling narratives to write clear, succinct, influential, and impactful research deliverables with a clear takeaway and a strong so what for the business (aligned to business goals).
• Cross-functional collaboration: Working with multiple stakeholders across product, design, analytics, Voice of Customer and engineering, including senior leaders, to understand priorities and motivations, ensuring research output addresses their questions.
• Process optimization and efficiency: Making critical decisions swiftly to keep projects on track and aligned with broader product and business goals. You will contribute to how we develop our research practice by identifying opportunities to optimize research processes at an organizational level, advocating for improvements and putting ideas into action.
• Advocacy: You will employ customer-advocacy strategies to keep the user top of mind for the business and influence the work of stakeholders.
• Mentorship: Providing mentorship and coaching to other researchers, actively guiding them in their professional growth and research execution.

Hiring Requirements:

• Minimum BA/BSc degree in psychology, HCI, design, communication, statistics or other related field.
• 8+ years of professional applied research experience, demonstrating the ability to tackle the most ambiguous and high-risk strategic business problems, bringing clarity through critical thinking.
• Mastery of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including advanced techniques (e.g., ethnographic studies, complex survey design, diary studies, statistical analysis interpretation).
• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to influence the product leadership team and both ask and answer meaningful and impactful questions.
• Superior stakeholder management and influencing skills, capable of constructively challenging stakeholder direction, while still balancing business priorities.
• A flexible, confident, and tenacious attitude, capable of resolving conflicts autonomously and demonstrating resilience and positivity.
• Experience leveraging research tools like UserTesting, dscout, and others, along with the adaptability to learn and utilize new tools as needed.

Perks of Working at Viator:

• Competitive compensation packages (routinely benchmarked against the latest industry data), including base salary, annual bonus, and equity.
• “Work your way” with flexibility to suit your lifestyle. Viator takes a remote-friendly approach to collaboration across a worldwide team, with the option to join on-site as often as you’d like.
• Flexible schedule. Work-life balance is ingrained in our culture by design. Trust and accountability make it work.
• Donation matching. Give back? Give more! We match qualifying charitable donations annually.
• Tuition assistance. Want to level up your career? We love to hear it! Receive annual support for qualified programs.
• Lifestyle benefit. An annual benefit to spend on yourself. Use it on travel, wellness, or whatever suits you.
• Travel perks. We believe that travel is employee development, so we provide discounts and more.
• Employee assistance program. We’re here for you with resources and programs to help you through life’s challenges.
• Health benefits. We offer great coverage and competitive premiums.

Our Values:

• We aspire to lead. Tap into your talent, ambition, and knowledge to bring us – and you – to new heights.
• We’re relentlessly curious. We push beyond the usual, the known, the “that’s just how it’s done.”
• We’re better together. We learn from, accept, respect, support, and value one another– and are creating something remarkable in the process.
• We serve our customers, always. We listen, question, respond, and strive for wow moments.
• We strive for better, not perfect. We won’t get it right the first time – or every time. We’ll provide a safe environment in which to make mistakes, iterate, improve, and grow.
• Our workplace is for everyone, as is our people powered platform. At Tripadvisor, we want you to bring your unique identities, abilities, and experiences, so we can collectively revolutionize travel and together find the good out there.

If you need a reasonable accommodation or support during the application or the recruiting process due to a medical condition or disability, please reach out to your individual recruiter or send an email to AccessibleRecruiting@Tripadvisor.com and let us know the nature of your request. Please include the job requisition number in your message.