**Business Group overview** Within Microsoft’s Business & Industry Copilot (BIC), we are constantly pushing the boundaries of what an AI-first business application can be and delivering immediate impact to users and customers to transform their day-to-day work with AI. Our research studio plays a critical role in building immersive and meaningful experiences that address users’ jobs-to-be-done in our products.   **Team** **overview** As a **Principal** **-level Individual Contributor** , you will be driving high priority UX research programs for our **Marketin** **g Engineering** team in the business applications division. Marketing Engineering develops and implements a wide array of services that support marketing and sales efforts, ensuring seamless customer engagement and optimized marketing operations. The team's mission is to transform both customer and marketer experiences by leveraging AI and automation, enabling timely and personalized interactions that drive revenue growth and improve customer satisfaction. **Company Culture Statement** At Microsoft, we have a clear mission and bold ambitions: Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more through our technology and innovation. To make that a reality, our BIC UXR team is charged with crafting solutions that transform the way business users are working by allowing them to focus on building strong relationships with customers, empowering them to take data driven actions, and optimizing their time for impact. For this, we’re leveraging modern design paradigms as well as the latest AI capabilities, all with a steadfast commitment to customer privacy and Responsible AI. Our success requires a deep understanding of our enterprise users and an ability to transform data-driven insights into relentlessly simple, intuitive, and human-centered experiences: This is where you come in!    **Responsibilities** You will drive human-centered strategy and execute high priority projects aimed at product innovation and development, to ensure that critical decisions are data-informed and tied to key learnings. Working with product partners, you will drive short and long-term research plans to fill in knowledge gaps, identify risks, and inform product decisions. Your primary job is to advocate for our users and turn their needs into reality by helping the product team understand what would make a user’s experience more useful, valuable, and delightful. You will be a part of a high performing user research team where community of practice and learning from one another keeps everyone supported while working at a fast pace. In addition, you’ll be joining Microsoft’s larger community of researchers across the globe where we share best practices and celebrate our learning in annual conferences, publications, mentorship programs, and more.   Your responsibilities will include: + Proactively design and execute a cohesive and focused research program for critical area(s), establishing Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) and experience outcomes as a guidepost for the team to strive towards.  + Balance both agile and strategic research methods on a daily basis to influence product direction, and overall user experience.  + Leverage qualitative and quantitative data to synthesize and distill data across the division or the company into actionable insights  + Produce impactful artifacts generated from research findings which are visually rich and bring clarity to the space being studied.   + Partner with Design, Product Management and Engineering to deliver experiences that are simple, emotionally rewarding and that make employees, customers and partner’s lives better.  + Understand industry trends and connect with other Microsoft product teams to share and leverage insights across the company.  + Create actionable insights from your own research findings and by leveraging research done by others  + Communicate your findings in a clear, concise, and visual (when appropriate) manner to key stakeholders  + Empower your stakeholders to make effective decisions and take action on research insights in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment  + Influence senior leadership with a persuasive data-driven stance on business opportunities and experience gaps  **Qualifications** **Required** **/Minimum** **Qualifications** + Bachelor's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 8+ years User Experience Research experience  + OR Master's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 6+ years User Experience Research experience  + OR Doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 4+ years User Experience Research experience  + OR equivalent experience.  + Relevant domain experience within technology sector.  + Experience in research methods impacting both product direction and detailed experience design.  **Preferred Qualifications** + Experienced in foundational research (e.g., in-depth interviews, user journey mapping, persona development, diary studies, longitudinal studies, field/remote studies), evaluative research (e.g., concept value testing, usability studies, prototype testing, heuristic evaluations), and synthesis experience (e.g., literature reviews, top insights summaries) with demonstrated product impact. + Ability to quickly and effectively analyze research data and present rich findings simply and clearly to influence product design and direction  + Demonstrated experience delivering projects and customer insights that resulted in strong product impact  + Passion for learning new technologies and understanding the needs of users across a wide range of technical abilities.  + Excellent collaboration skills across disciplines - PM, Data Science, Engineering, and Product Design. Enthusiasm to partner on key goals and evolve the program based on feedback.    + Superb communication skills to convey complex ideas and insights across cross-disciplinary audiences, along with strong presentation, project management and process management skills.   + Experience generating and leveraging quantitative insights such as telemetry-based usage data and high-volume survey data  + Strong understanding of trends in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and experience researching AI adoption and use  + Deep understanding of user research tools like UserTesting, UserZoom, Dscout, Figma, Qualtrics and emerging AI research tools + Experience with enterprise product research \#BICJobs; #BICStudios   _Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening_ _ _ _requirements_ _are_ _ _ _required_ _for this role. These_ _ _ _requirements_ _include, but_ _are not limited to the following specialized security screenings: Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be_ _ _ _required_ _to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter._ _  _   Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .