About Us:
insightsoftware is a global provider of reporting, analytics, and performance management solutions that unlock the potential of business data and transform the way finance and data teams operate. We empower leaders from over 32,000 organizations to make timely and intelligent decisions. Our comprehensive solutions span Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A), Controllership, and Data and Analytics. We deliver finance teams the insights required to navigate any economic climate and drive greater financial intelligence, while increasing productivity, visibility, accuracy, and compliance. Learn more at insightsoftware.com.
Job Description:
Job Summary
insightsoftware is seeking a Senior User Experience Researcher to serve as a research leader within the newly established UX team in the Certent Equity Management (CEM) product organization. Reporting to the UX Manager, Equity, this role is responsible for defining the research strategy, leading complex multi-domain studies, and ensuring that user evidence is systematically embedded into product decision-making across the CEM platform. The Senior UX Researcher brings deep expertise in both research methodology and equity compensation domain knowledge — enabling them to independently scope high-impact research programs, engage credibly with senior stakeholders, and mentor junior researchers as the team scales. This role goes beyond executing individual studies — it requires shaping how the organization understands its users, establishing research practices and infrastructure, and serving as a trusted strategic partner to Product Management and Engineering leadership on the most consequential product decisions affecting equity plan administrators, finance teams, participants, and broker partners.
Key Responsibilities
Research Strategy & Program Design
- Define and own the CEM UX research roadmap, aligning research priorities with product strategy, migration planning, and the highest-impact customer experience opportunities across the platform
- Identify and scope multi-domain research programs that address systemic usability challenges spanning administration, ESPP, batch processing, broker integrations, admin reporting, financial reporting, and participant experiences
- Establish research prioritization criteria that balance strategic value, customer impact, product team readiness, and available research capacity
- Partner with the UX Manager and Director of Product to ensure research investment is directed toward the decisions that carry the most risk, ambiguity, or customer consequence
Research Planning & Execution
- Lead the design and execution of complex, high-stakes research initiatives — including foundational studies that define user segments, multi-phase evaluative programs that span discovery through post-launch validation, and longitudinal studies that track experience quality over time
- Select and apply advanced research methodologies based on the question at hand — including contextual inquiry, ethnographic observation, participatory design, concept testing, unmoderated and moderated usability testing, diary studies, surveys, conjoint analysis, and comparative benchmarking
- Design research studies that account for the complexity and specificity of equity compensation workflows — understanding that tasks like configuring a vesting schedule, processing an ESPP purchase, reconciling an ASC 718 disclosure, or troubleshooting a failed batch job carry domain-specific nuances that generic UX methods alone will not capture
- Recruit and manage participant panels across relevant user segments, including equity plan administrators, finance and accounting teams, HR stakeholders, plan participants, broker operations contacts, and Professional Services consultants
- Lead research sessions with senior-level customer stakeholders — including VP-level administrators, controllers, and CFO-office contacts — with the credibility and domain fluency required to engage in substantive, trust-building conversations
Analysis, Synthesis & Strategic Insight
- Synthesize complex qualitative and quantitative research data into clear, prioritized findings with specific product, design, and architectural recommendations
- Develop and maintain comprehensive persona frameworks, journey maps, empathy maps, and mental model documentation specific to CEM's core user segments and equity administration contexts
- Conduct cross-study synthesis — connecting findings across multiple research efforts to identify platform-level experience themes, recurring friction patterns, and systemic opportunities that individual studies alone would not reveal
- Perform heuristic evaluations and expert reviews of CEM interfaces, applying both established usability principles and deep domain-informed judgment about what equity professionals expect from their tools
- Define and track UX metrics — task completion rates, time-on-task, error rates, satisfaction scores, and Net Promoter indicators — establishing baselines, measuring the impact of design changes, and reporting experience quality trends to product leadership
Research Operations & Practice Building
- Partner with the UX Manager to establish and scale the CEM UX research practice — defining processes, templates, tooling, and quality standards that enable consistent, high-quality research as the team grows
- Build and maintain a centralized research repository — organizing past studies, key findings, persona documentation, journey maps, and competitive UX benchmarks — so insights are accessible, discoverable, and reusable across the product organization
- Develop and manage a participant recruitment pipeline, including customer panel relationships, screening criteria, incentive structures, and scheduling workflows that support a sustainable cadence of research
- Establish research ethics and data handling practices appropriate for a regulated financial services environment, ensuring participant consent, data privacy, and confidentiality standards are met
- Evaluate, recommend, and manage the UX research toolchain — including usability testing platforms, survey tools, analysis and synthesis software, and insight management systems
Product Collaboration
- Serve as a strategic research partner to Product Managers, Product Owners, and the Director of Product, providing evidence-based input on prioritization, positioning, and product direction for the most complex and consequential decisions
- Collaborate with UI Designers to translate research findings into design direction, validating concepts and prototypes through iterative testing before engineering commitment
- Contribute research-informed input during PRD development for high-complexity features, helping Product Managers define requirements that reflect real user workflows, mental models, and pain points
- Participate in sprint reviews and QA walkthroughs for high-impact features to evaluate whether delivered experiences align with research findings and design intent
- Lead foundational research for the platform modernization initiative — defining user needs, workflow expectations, and experience benchmarks that inform the UX vision and interaction model for the next-generation architecture
Customer & Field Engagement
- Lead customer advisory sessions, onsite visits, and user group research engagements, building sustained relationships with key accounts that enable ongoing access to high-value research participants
- Partner with Professional Services leadership to understand implementation pain points, onboarding friction, and common configuration challenges that signal underlying UX problems at a systemic level
- Collaborate with Customer Support leadership to analyze support ticket patterns, identify usability-driven issue categories, and direct research efforts toward the highest-impact problem areas
Required Qualifications
Experience
- 5+ years of UX research experience, with progressive responsibility leading complex, multi-phase research programs across enterprise SaaS applications
- 3+ years of experience in equity management, equity compensation, or financial services platforms — either in a UX research capacity, as a practitioner (equity plan administrator, compensation analyst, financial reporting analyst), or in a senior product role within the equity domain
- Demonstrated experience defining research strategy and roadmaps that align with product planning cycles and influence prioritization at the leadership level
- Proven ability to synthesize research across multiple studies into strategic insights that shaped product direction, design systems, or platform architecture decisions
- Exceptional facilitation skills for engaging senior enterprise stakeholders — including VP and C-level contacts — in substantive research conversations
Technical & Domain Knowledge
- Deep understanding of equity compensation principles, including stock options, RSUs, RSAs, ESPP, performance awards, participant transaction lifecycles, and the regulatory and accounting frameworks (ASC 718, IFRS 2) that shape user workflows
- Strong familiarity with equity administration workflows — plan setup, vesting, exercises, terminations, corporate actions, batch processing, broker settlement, and reporting — sufficient to design research that reflects real-world task complexity and to challenge assumptions grounded in incomplete user understanding
- Expertise in a broad range of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, with strong judgment on method selection and the ability to adapt approaches to constraints common in enterprise B2B research (limited participant access, domain complexity, regulatory sensitivity)
- Proficiency in UX research tools — including usability testing platforms (UserTesting, Maze, Lookback, or similar), survey tools (Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey), and analysis/synthesis tools (Dovetail, Miro, FigJam, or similar)
Education
- Bachelor's degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Information Science, Anthropology, or a related field required
Preferred Qualifications
- CEP (Certified Equity Professional) certification is a plus
- Direct experience with the Certent Equity Management platform or comparable equity administration systems
- Experience building research operations from scratch or near-scratch — including participant panels, research repositories, toolchain selection, and research governance frameworks
- Experience conducting research in regulated financial services environments where data sensitivity, compliance workflows, and audit requirements shape the user experience
- Experience leading foundational UX research for platform migration or modernization programs where research directly informed the design architecture of a next-generation product
- Experience with competitive UX benchmarking and industry analysis within the equity management or financial services SaaS landscape
- Experience in a high-growth, fast-paced SaaS company
The salary range in United States of America for this position is 111,000.00 to 139,000.00 USD Annual.
Your specific offer within this range will be determined by your skills, experience, and qualifications. For non-sales roles, you may be eligible for a bonus. For sales roles, this range includes a commission target.
We are committed to pay transparency and fair compensation practices. If you have questions about our compensation approach, please don't hesitate to ask during the interview process.
Additional Information
All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.
Learn more about our high-energy, high-performance global team: Work With Us
insightsoftware About Us: Hear From Our Team
Background checks are required for employment with insightsoftware, where permitted by country, state/province.
At insightsoftware, we are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, national origin, gender, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or parental status, disability, veteran status, or other class protected by applicable law. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.
