Senior UX Researcher, Operations Research

📋 Description

• • Own the end-to-end research lifecycle for Zoox’s internal operations suite, from early-stage discovery to post-launch validation, ensuring every tool we ship measurably improves the day-to-day efficiency of our autonomous-vehicle fleet.
• • Lead immersive kick-off workshops with product managers, engineers, field-ops technicians, and customer-support leads to surface the real root problems behind surface-level pain points—using journey-mapping, service-safari shadowing, and role-play exercises to build a shared, evidence-based problem statement.
• • Design and execute mixed-method studies (diary studies, contextual inquiry, experience diagramming, and lightweight usability tests) that illuminate how technical and non-technical internal users interact with complex tooling, uncovering unmet needs that directly inform roadmap prioritization.
• • Translate raw field data into crisp, narrative-driven insights that speak the language of design, engineering, and business stakeholders—delivering research reports, opportunity maps, and “north-star” experience visions that guide both immediate tactical fixes and long-term strategic bets.
• • Act as the unwavering voice of internal users in every cross-functional meeting, challenging assumptions that could compromise usability or safety and ensuring that human-centered principles remain non-negotiable—even when timelines are aggressive.
• • Balance the interests of a diverse stakeholder set—ranging from vehicle technicians in the field to data scientists in HQ—by setting clear research priorities, managing expectations, and communicating trade-offs transparently.
• • Contribute to Zoox’s research-ops infrastructure: refining participant-recruitment pipelines for hard-to-reach technical users, maintaining a living research repository, and evolving our mixed-methods toolkit so future studies launch faster and yield richer insights.
• • Mentor junior researchers and adjacent product teams on best practices for inclusive, psychologically safe research, fostering a culture where dissenting viewpoints are welcomed and every insight is stress-tested before it shapes product decisions.
• • Stay ahead of emerging operational challenges—such as scaling to new cities or integrating next-gen vehicle hardware—by proactively framing research questions that prepare the organization for unknowns before they become blockers.
• • Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and Engineering leadership to define success metrics for the operations suite, then track post-launch outcomes to validate that shipped features actually move the needle on fleet efficiency and operator satisfaction.