UX Researcher, Foundations

Since we opened our doors in 2009, the world of commerce has evolved immensely, and so has Square. After enabling anyone to take payments and never miss a sale, we saw sellers stymied by disparate, outmoded products and tools that wouldn’t work together.

So we expanded into software and started building integrated, omnichannel solutions – to help sellers sell online, manage inventory, offer buy now, pay later functionality, book appointments, engage loyal buyers, and hire and pay staff. Across it all, we’ve embedded financial services tools at the point of sale, so merchants can access a business loan and manage their cash flow in one place. Afterpay furthers our goal to provide omnichannel tools that unlock meaningful value and growth, enabling sellers to capture the next generation shopper, increase order sizes, and compete at a larger scale.

Today, we are a partner to sellers of all sizes – large, enterprise-scale businesses with complex operations, sellers just starting, as well as merchants who began selling with Square and have grown larger over time. As our sellers grow, so do our solutions. There is a massive opportunity in front of us. We’re building a significant, meaningful, and lasting business, and we are helping sellers worldwide do the same.

The Role

Square UXR, part of Block Customer Insights, is looking for a Senior UX Researcher to join our Foundations team. You will work closely with cross-functional partners to ensure Square’s Point of Sale app is intuitive to use and allows businesses of all types to serve customers with the speed and accuracy they depend on. We know we can’t build remarkable products without first understanding how our customers will use them in the real world, and that's where you come in. In this role, you will conduct generative and evaluative research that helps product teams build the right experiences for our sellers. Your research work will focus on Square’s core product used by millions of businesses and will directly influence the product and roadmap.

You Will

• Define and inform the product roadmap through insights from generative and evaluative research, ensuring that the development and growth of Square is seller-focused
• Lead qualitative and quantitative research throughout the product development cycle that deepens our understanding of Square sellers, focused on uncovering motivations, needs, and notable behavioral and psychographic characteristics
• Collect and analyze user behavior through mixed methods research including in depth interviews, ethnographic research, contextual inquiry, card sorting, surveys, usability studies, and other relevant research methodologies
• Evaluate product design (in market and new concepts) in order to better serve Square sellers through a strong focus on user experience, as well as identifying growth opportunities
• Effectively communicate research insights and findings to internal teams, leading with data-driven analysis and business relevant synthesis, via research reports and presentations
• Collaborate with teammates in Design, Product Management, Marketing and Engineering to build in research at appropriate times through the product development or go-to-market cycle
• Advocate for customer needs through storytelling, including writing, visual, and verbal communication that helps other teams build empathy for our customers

You Have

• 8 years of experience conducting and leading impactful UX research, market research experience also a plus
• Demonstrated experience planning and executing UX research studies independently across the whole product development cycle. You’re excited about working in a fast-paced environment.
• Empathy, knowledge and a deep desire to improve the lives of business owners.
• A track record of using research to influence decisions across the whole product development process and marketing and creative strategy, through successful collaboration with product managers, design, product marketing, data science, etc.
• Agile approach to building research plans that deliver on wide-ranging team needs under tight timeframes.
• Masterful expertise with a wide range of qualitative research methodologies such as one-on-one interviews, diary studies, ethnographic field research, usability testing (lab and remote), heuristic evaluations, and co-creation workshops.
• Experience and comfort with quantitative research methodologies, including surveys / survey design, experiments, data collection and analysis.
• Experience managing 3rd party vendors and agencies for recruiting, moderation, or end to end research support, when required.
• Solid project management skills, including planning logistics, coordinating activities with multiple team members and flexibly adapting to changes. A willingness to get hands-on and personally recruit participants.
• Experience working in highly collaborative multidisciplinary teams.
• Simple and clear style of communicating findings.

We're working to build a more inclusive economy where our customers have equal access to opportunity, and we strive to live by these same values in building our workplace. Block is an equal opportunity employer evaluating all employees and job applicants without regard to identity or any legally protected class. We will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records for employment in accordance with state and local laws and "fair chance" ordinances. We believe in being fair, and are committed to an inclusive interview experience, including providing reasonable accommodations to disabled applicants throughout the recruitment process. We encourage applicants to share any needed accommodations with their recruiter, who will treat these requests as confidentially as possible.