User Researcher

User Design Researcher

As a designer in KRADOS Futures, you will be part of a collaborative group of creative problem solvers passionate about innovation and informing the future of this organization. You will gather information to help us understand how to close capability gaps and present actionable COAs that will influence the Kessel Run Enterprise Product roadmap for years to come.

Opportunity

Using a variety of quantitative, qualitative, contextual, discovery and framing research methods, you will gather and present evidence that will drive the delivery of the Kessel Run Enterprise Solution. Always keeping the Kessel Run goal of delivering award winning software to the warfighter. As a designer who is focused on research and discovery your responsibility will be to ensure that our software continues to work towards solving for the enterprise solution by informing day 2 delivery.

Role

As a Futures Designer you will typically work with a balanced team to conduct research, discovery and framing efforts, provide credible and defendable data to a cross-functional advisory committee that will be made up of vested individuals depending on the effort. Reporting regularly to Futures L2 while staying aligned with the primary customer being L1 as well as KRADOS L2 and the L3 product teams. More discovery based efforts will require less of a balanced team structure for engineering and product.

Futures designers will be expected to adapt methodologies and approaches based on the effort at hand meaning projects and outcomes may differ based on priority and the area of focus. Designers must be prepared to fail at times and learn from those experiences.

Responsibilities

In collaboration with developers and product, coordinate and execute all phases of user research, including authoring research documents, developing screeners, recruiting potential participants, developing consent forms, surveys, test plans and interview discussion guides and moderating usability lab sessions, lab setup and consolidation of usability findings database and reports.

Plan, schedule and facilitate smooth-running user studies, interviews, and other related interactions with customers and users in support of user experience team projects.

Creating and maintaining project schedules, and advising project teams in planning user research activities.

Act as an excellent liaison between customers, user research participants and our cross-functional product team members at KR.

• Assist Product teams with research spikes and the best user research methodology to meet both user and business objectives
• Create, present and maintain project documentation including research plan(s), schedules, status and meeting reports, usability findings database, research archive and share-out/debrief reports After Action reports post travel
• Partner closely with the KRADOS, Architecture and or partnering portfolio team(s) on research and travel when appropriate
• Work as a balanced team alongside product and engineering to conduct research, discovery and framing efforts
• The team is responsible for generating proposal presentations and research finding COAs, framing outcomes and advocating for improvement recommendations that feed the L1 roadmap
• Prepare research findings deliverables such as reports, presentations, comparative analysis, service blueprints, user flows, user journey maps, storyboards, use case COAs, personas, etc. as appropriate for each project

Key Qualities

• Strong verbal and written communications skills coupled with a high attention to detail
• Excellent observational skills and a great analytical ability.
• Demonstrated experience developing and conducting user research, including lab and field-based user studies, heuristic evaluations, cognitive walkthroughs and contextual inquiries.
• Demonstrated experience developing personas, scenarios and work flows based on user research.
• user research work documented, available for easy viewing and prepared presentations when needed
• Ability to travel as necessary to conduct User research
• Usability testing, prototyping
• Understand technical concepts related to system architecture (understand the impact and approach to adding a new service or product to existing ecosystem)
• You are a U.S. citizen and are eligible to obtain a U.S. Security Clearance (see eligibility requirements here)

This is a Federal civilian service position within the United States Air Force. We are hiring at the equivalent of a GS-12 up to GS-13 level for this position. This means you can expect a base salary of $71,099 to $109,908 multiplied by your locality rate, based on your experience. You can find your locality definition here and see the pay tables for the GS scale here. Our headquarters is located in Boston, MA; for a Boston-based employee, this would translate to a range from $93,175 to $144,034

We also provide paid time off, health, and retirement benefits. There are advancement opportunities to promote to more senior levels after hiring.

We understand that there is no such thing as the ideal candidate for any job and we believe in empowering people to learn and grow throughout their careers. We encourage any applicant who is interested in making an impact in the Department of Defense to apply to this position regardless of background and qualifications.

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