Principal Experience User Researcher, Canada

Ever wanted to help build the tools that designers and developers use to make a better world? Autodesk’s Platform Services team designs common capabilities used across our large portfolio of design and make software – helping Autodesk teams and customers grow their business, solve important workflow challenges, and build on top of our 3D modeling, visualization, and data insight software. PSET touches virtually every Autodesk product surface, meaning the work done here shapes decisions at the infrastructure level with downstream effects across the entire ecosystem.

In the role of Principal Researcher you’ll be responsible for developing the research strategy that supports AI-enabled developer workflows. Developers are a critical component of the Autodesk platform ecosystem, using infrastructure we provide to build solutions that solve meaningful industry problems. As the team accelerates its AI investments, you’ll define how we understand developer needs: how they discover and adopt our platform capabilities, how they integrate AI tools into their build cycles, and where future investments can unlock productivity & growth.

Your work will span the full developer journey – from discovery and onboarding through to building, deployment, debugging, and monitoring usage. We are seeking a collaborative researcher who can successfully focus a large set of stakeholders on the key goals and questions that require developer feedback, and partner with designers to craft an agile program of discovery, generative and evaluative research. You will help understand developer workflows, frictions & needs, derisk decision making across the product development lifecycle, and evaluate the success of feature experiments in alignment with business objectives.

Experience leveraging mixed methods approaches, triangulating research with product data, identifying patterns, and translating insights into action will be key to your success. You’ll also have an opportunity to mentor junior researchers, share best practices across Autodesk’s cohesive and active research community, show thought leadership inside and outside the company, and get mentored by senior members of our entire design team. We are open to remote candidates based in Canada.

• Become a domain expert on customer experience and trends in developer workflows and experiences in alignment with emerging AI capabilities
• Deliver research strategy that balances business and customer needs
• Track key areas of uncertainty and prioritize research to minimize product development risk
• Use customer insights to influence design and product roadmap
• Plan and execute a mixed-methods research program supporting AI enabled developer experiences
• Analyze quantitative/qualitative data and present study findings in a timely manner, in alignment with project milestones and business objectives
• Broadly share user research findings and contribute to increased empathy for developers within User Experience, Product Management, Marketing and Engineering
• Advance the discipline of user research within Autodesk

• Proven record in impacting user experience & business decisions through user research findings
• Ability to produce exceptional user research deliverables expressed in a portfolio of your work
• Expert knowledge and innovation in user research and field study methodologies, including designing and conducting usability studies, statistical analysis of survey data, heuristic evaluations, participatory design activities and focus groups
• Experience contributing user research within an agile development environment
• Ability to influence stakeholders across divisions including senior directors and VPs and present up to CTO
• English language fluency; exceptional verbal and written communication skills
• Excellent visual and oral storytelling skills
• MS/MFA+ in Human Factors, Human Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Engineering, Psychology, Product Design or related field
• Minimum 8 years of professional experience in the field of user research and usability

• Has experience shaping a research roadmap from the ground up and prioritizing high impact work
• Brings genuine knowledge and curiosity about AI and how it’s changing developer workflows
• Can navigate ambiguity at a platform level, where research questions often sit upstream of specific product decisions and affect multiple teams
• Comfortable mapping complex ecosystems and identifying where research has the most leverage
• Keen interest and ability in driving user research activities from concept to conclusion, working directly with any combination of stakeholders
• Contributes to research culture, championing research quality and evolving approaches & practices to help elevate the practice
• Embraces learning and curiosity about Autodesk tools and markets