Senior Manager, User Experience Researcher

Your opportunity

We believe that, when done right, investing liberates people to create their own destiny. We are driven by our purpose to champion every client’s goals with passion and integrity. We respect and appreciate the diversity of our employees, our clients, and the communities we serve. We challenge conventions strategically to create value for our clients, our firm and the world. We live and bring to life the concept of ‘own your tomorrow’ every day. We champion our employee strengths, guide their development, and invest in their long-term success. We hire optimistic, results-oriented, curious, innovative, and adaptable people with the desire to help our clients and one another succeed.

As a company, we were established by Chuck over 40 years ago to champion Main Street over Wall Street, and to help Americans transform themselves from earners to owners. Through advocacy and innovation, we work to make investing more affordable, accessible, and understandable for all. As we enter our fifth decade, we are looking for talented, innovative, and driven people who believe they can help themselves, and our clients, create a better future.

Our Culture:

Through Clients’ Eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qkic76FWat8

Our Opportunity:

The Charles Schwab Digital Services User Experience team is a multi-disciplinary group of user experience designers, visual designers, researchers, and content strategists. We work with strategic business and technology partners across the enterprise to build best-in-class digital experiences for our users.

Our business is driven by looking through our clients’ eyes, which makes it a dream place to work as a user experience researcher. Our company motto supports user advocacy. Our purpose is designing tools and experiences that enable users to achieve their financial goals.

This individual contributor position is an expert in User Experience Research. This person operates with independent judgement and leads by example demonstrating passion, positivity, and keen problem-solving skills.

This position is responsible for:

Research Consulting

· Set expectations with the project teams and prioritize activities.

· Create and maintain research schedules.

· Communicate status and agreements with project team.

· Review work with UX managers, keep them updated on project status and escalate items appropriately.

Teamwork, Collaboration and Engagement

· Works well with all partners to deliver work.

· Support UX team members.

· Strategically listen to feedback and help guide the delivery

· Collaborative and cooperative.

· Has a research position but is not rigidly fixed when presented with new information

· Passionate about team, our mission and the needs of our partners and users.

· Enthusiastic about UX design.

Empathy & Curiosity

· Understands and advocates user needs, walking in their shoes when possible.

· Focus on innovation and improvement.

· Regularly learns more about design theory, practice, and tools.

Why your work matters:

· You will support an engaged set of users who rely on our products to manage their financial lives.

· By researching and understanding the user needs you will be able to impact how our users do business with Schwab.

· You will learn how balance functionality against complexity on a highly visible platform which serves millions of advisors and retail customers.

· You will work with an engaged design team that fosters a learning environment.

What you’ll do:

· Work with diverse stakeholders to develop research plans that include both foundational and iterative testing.

· Conduct research, deploying a variety of methodologies.

· Create or apply data-driven personas.

· Deliver actionable recommendations.

· Instill best practices for research, provide guidance on how to meet usability requirements, and deliver high-quality work on tight schedules.

· Keep up to date with current UX research trends, tools and technology.

· Serve as an evangelist for user research and the benefit it provides to our clients.

What you have

What you have:

· At least 6-10 years’ experience as a user researcher at a consumer focused, digital product company.

· Advanced degree in applied psychology, experimental psychology, human factors psychology or engineering, human computer interaction, anthropology, sociology, or similar people-science-related discipline desired.

· 1+ year of Schwab domain experience gained as a current or recent contractor or employee

· Deliverables change on a project-by-project basis, but may include elements such as user interviews, task analyses, journey maps, personas, and usability testing.

· Expertise in synthesizing research data.

· Strong communicator and storyteller.

· Experience working in collaborative, geographically distributed software development environments on large, complex desktop web, mobile web, and mobile applications.

· Comfort in a project-oriented work environment, with a positive attitude and solid work ethic.

· Strong self-management skills, comfortable with substantial responsibility, working directly with our client partners, and capable of managing your project schedules.

· Ability to manage multiple projects at one time with attention to detail and deliver expected documents/recommendations on time.

· Effective relationship builder: ability to partner cross-functionally, cross-enterprise and work effectively with various levels of the organization as well as various personality types.

· Proficiency with Mac OS X and/or Windows office productivity software; hands-on experience with some of following software would be helpful but can be trained: Mural, InVision, dscout, UserZoom, UserTesting, or OptimalWorkshop.

· Preferred experience with financial services, systems / design for internal users, and new product launches. Learn more about Life@Schwab. Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer   committed to diversifying its workforce. It is Schwab's policy to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or     related medical conditions), gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, legally protected medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, military status,   citizenship status or any other status that is protected by law.