Lead Usability Analyst (UX Researcher)

itD is looking for a Lead Usability Analyst (UX Researcher), you’ll lead design research across web, mobile apps, in-store digital experiences, and emerging AI-enabled touchpoints. You’ll advocate for user needs throughout the product development cycle and partner cross-functionally to shape strategy, improve client experiences, and evolve research practices through AI-enabled tooling.

As part of the User Experience team, you’ll help advance how research is conducted while maintaining rigor, participant trust, data integrity, and client privacy.

Responsibilities:

Core Research

• Lead high-impact studies end-to-end, using sound research judgment to select the right approach for the question at hand.
• Conduct foundational research to inform product and design strategy across complex, high-priority initiatives.
• Analyze qualitative research data, including usability tests, interviews, participatory design, and heuristic evaluations, and synthesize findings with quantitative and behavioral data.
• Translate research findings into actionable insights and specific design recommendations.
• Connect research signals across projects to identify patterns, synergies, and broader opportunities.
• Communicate insights through clear, compelling storytelling that makes complex research actionable for partners ranging from developers to executives.

AI-Enabled Ways of Working

• Use approved AI tools to accelerate study setup, analysis, synthesis, desk research, survey drafting, and reporting while maintaining rigor, researcher judgment, and accountability for conclusions.
• Design research for AI-driven experiences, including agentic, conversational, and personalized AI features.
• Evaluate AI experiences for usability, trust, transparency, and the difference between what users say they want and how they actually behave.
• Contribute to responsible AI practices in research, including appropriate handling of participant data and PII, awareness of model limitations and bias, appropriate disclosure, and human validation of AI-generated outputs before they inform decisions.
• Help maintain a well-organized, easily accessible, and increasingly AI-queryable knowledge base of past research, such as searchable insight repositories, so prior learnings are discoverable and reusable across teams and tools.
• Connect research insights to shared product, design, and engineering workflows so evidence reaches partners where they work.

Leadership & Adaptability

• Act as a thought partner in discovery, strategy, and problem framing.
• Navigate ambiguity across project priorities, concurrent workstreams, and problem spaces, bringing clarity to changing scope, user needs, and decisions.
• Mentor researchers and designers in a user-centered process and help raise the bar on methodology, AI-enabled practices, and insight quality across the team.
• Evaluate emerging research methods, AI tools, and ways of working; help the team adopt approaches that add value and phase out those that do not.

The internal responsibilities will be as follows:

• Attend regular internal practice community meetings.
• Collaborate with your itD practice team on industry thought leadership.
• Complete client case studies and learning material (Blogs, media material).
• Build out material to contribute to Digital Transformation practice.
• Attend internal itD networking events (in person and virtual).
• Work with leadership on career fast-track opportunities.