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Senior UX Researcher & Strategist

IBM

Product, Design

California, USA · Texas City, TX, USA

Posted on Feb 21, 2026

Introduction

At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You’ll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM’s product and technology landscape. Here, you’ll have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world.

Your role and responsibilities

As a member of the Secure Product group, you will sit at the intersection of strategy, operations, and mentorship. You will lead research that doesn't just inform a single feature, but shapes the trajectory of our entire product portfolio.

Your Key Responsibilities:

Lead Strategic Initiatives: Drive cross-team and cross-functional research focusing on product-market fit, roadmap prioritization, and deep audience insights.
Synthesize the "Big Picture": Connect the dots across multiple projects to reveal broader patterns, helping teams think beyond their immediate sprint cycles.
Build the Infrastructure: Develop and scale research playbooks, repositories, and knowledge-sharing systems to raise the collective "Research IQ" of the team.
Evangelize Insights: Translate complex findings into inspiring, actionable narratives that align with both business goals and customer needs.
Empower & Coach: Act as a research force-multiplier. You’ll provide coaching and operational support to designers, helping them run their own reliable day-to-day studies.

Required education

High School Diploma/GED

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

7+ Years of Research Leadership: A proven track record of leading qualitative and quantitative research that shapes product strategy (not just UI/UX tweaks).
The "Coach" Mindset: Experience mentoring non-researchers and partners, tailoring your teaching style to different skill levels and confidence bars.
Operational Excellence: You’ve built or scaled research repositories, templates, and systems that make research repeatable and accessible.
Enterprise Fluency: Experience in SaaS, developer platforms, or technically complex domains where you must bridge the gap between technical users and business stakeholders.

Preferred technical and professional experience

Strategic Catalyst: Proven track record of leading research that fundamentally shifts product strategy and influences long-term executive roadmaps.
Design Empowerment: Passionate about equipping design teams with deep customer insights and actionable frameworks (personas, journey maps) that fuel confident, user-centric building.
Culture of Empathy: You believe customer empathy is a team sport. You don’t just "deliver" insights; you co-develop them and coach others to experiment and grow.
Methodological Innovation: You find patterns where others see noise. You enjoy experimenting with new methods—and when the right tool doesn’t exist, you invent it.
Stakeholder Alignment: You treat internal stakeholders as customers, designing research programs and deliverables that account for their specific constraints and business goals.
Engaging Storytelling: You value research that is not only robust and valid but also inspiring enough to move a high-level technical organization to action.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence—from machine learning to generative AI—to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM’s AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM’s hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments—a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.

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