UX Research Analyst and Writer

UX Research Analyst & Writer

Are you able to write thorough and engaging UX research findings?

Help shape the e-commerce experiences of some of the largest sites in the world.

Would you like to join a team of dedicated usability researchers, who produce cutting-edge User Experience research? Producing UX research findings that will be used by thousands of web professionals, including some of the biggest brands in the world? Are you excellent at presenting complex research findings on web user behavior through the written word?

Then apply for the remote full-time position as ‘UX Research Analyst & Writer’ at Baymard Institute.

About Your Job at Baymard

A sincere passion for, and demonstrated excellence in, writing is essential as you’ll be spending at least 50% of your time composing and articulating research findings as written guidelines.

In this position, you will join Baymard’s team of usability researchers and primarily work at annotating and analyzing our raw usability test data and writing the insights from this into usability guidelines. The guidelines go directly into our subscription platform Baymard Premium.

Our Baymard Premium customers are eagerly waiting for your UX research insights, be it the UI designer at Nike or the e-commerce director at Lenovo, as they use it as direct input for their UX and UI design decisions.

In this role, you’ll need to enjoy analysis and writing, since analyzing usability test data and writing usability test findings will be at least 50–80% of what you’ll be doing all year round.

Besides writing, the job involves moderating 1-1 usability tests, analyzing web user behavior, identifying themes and issues across multiple sites, and coming up with proposals for design patterns that can alleviate the identified problems.

In this job, you’ll be directly shaping the future of e-commerce, become a published usability research author, and should expect to join the ranks of the absolute top experts within e-commerce usability within a few years (if you aren’t already).

We want to work with the smartest and most dedicated people around the world, and the position is therefore open to full-time remote work. All of Baymard’s current team is already working remotely, so the entire company is structured around remote work. In other words, you are welcome to work with us from any location you prefer (as long as there’s a stable internet connection).

For more information about Baymard as a company, see the “key work values” section.

Job Qualifications

You will help expand and strengthen Baymard’s research core, which is the foundation for all of our products and services.

While we will train you in Baymard’s methodology and analysis process, we expect that you have the following qualifications. The numbers in brackets indicate the weighted importance of each on a 7-point scale (higher = more important). These weights reflect how candidates are evaluated, so make sure your application illustrates your prowess in the highest-weighted skills and traits.

• [7/7] Substantial experience with analyzing usability test data. We take qualitative test data in the form of test session videos as the basis for our analysis, so experience in this form of analysis is preferred.
• [7/7] Substantial experience with technical or professional writing. While UX writing is preferred, this experience can also come from other paths, e.g. a background in journalism, technical writing, research, etc.
• [5/7] Broad experience with usability research (e.g., conducting think-aloud usability test sessions, analyzing data, writing findings).
• [5/7] Ability to propose web design recommendations for the usability issues we identify.
• [4/7] Familiarity with the ‘web industry’ and especially its jargon (can be from experience with web development, design, research, writing, etc.).
• [2/7] Editor experience, by helping other writers craft and improve their own written work.
• [2/7] Technical experience with web design or development.
• [1/7] Experience using a style manual (e.g. Chicago Manual of Style, APA, AP, or similar substantial style manual).

We furthermore expect that you are comfortable working remotely via digital platforms. Additionally, as most of our team is either based in the eastern USA or western Europe, you must have at least 3–4 hours of daily scheduled work overlap with those time zones.

Practical Details

• Salary: in accordance with qualifications.
• Start date: as soon as possible.
• Travel: limited; expect only 0-1 week of optional travel each year (in connection with an optional, company-wide meetup).

Note: Based on the applications, a few selected candidates will be assigned a paid writing and analysis test, which will be the main evaluation criterion for the position. This will also be a good way for you to get a feel for the primary task of this job. (The test will be performed remotely. You’ll be given a real usability test dataset to analyze and describe within a 10-day deadline.)

If you want to prepare the best possible, consider reading our SaaS sales page and the “work values” section below.

Sincerely,
Edward Scott, UX Research Lead at the Baymard Institute

Referral Bonus: If this job isn’t you, but you know someone who’ll be the perfect fit, please send them the link to this page. If we end up hiring the person you referred, we’ll give you a 1 year access to a Baymard Premium ‘Comprehensive’ plan (normally $1,800/year).

Key Work Values at Baymard

Our entire team works remotely, but once a year, we all get together for a meetup. The first image is from Iceland, where one of the activities was snowmobiling on glaciers. Second, is teambuilding activities in Parque Eduardo VII and third image is from surfing lessons — both in Lisbon, Portugal.

The following work values are central to us at Baymard and hopefully gives you an idea of our culture and what working at Baymard is like:

• Flat organization – Baymard is a small organization of just ~50 people. This means zero management layers between you and the final decision. You’ll have direct access to and impact on decision making.
• Lots of responsibility – From day 1 (OK, maybe day 2), you will be working on final products or services. We believe the best way to learn is to work on actual products and challenges, supplemented with rich early feedback.
• Long-term focus – Decisions are always based on their long term impact. We’re not interested in hunting after the next “quick win” — we want to make a lasting impact on the e-commerce industry and usually adopt a 5-year perspective in our decisions and projects.
• Remote from the ground up – 100% of the team works remotely. We’ve deliberately designed the organization around remote work. That said, we do bring the entire team together for a week once a year somewhere interesting in the world.
• Team of ‘subject matter’ nerds – Everyone geeks out a bit on their work interests. We love that, and once a week someone from the team does a 20min presentation on their latest obsession — whether it’s quasi-quantum-worlds or the proper usage of hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes.
• Founders engaged in the product – We believe it is essential that those orchestrating the work of the organization are keenly in tune with all aspects of it. The two founders of Baymard have therefore performed every type of task in the organization themselves (from programming to UX testing), and continue to work directly on the product.
• Flexible hours – Beyond ensuring availability for meetings and a few hours of daily overlap with your colleagues, you are largely free to plan your own workweek. E.g., we have some that take a 2-hour break midday and then instead work in the evening, or only work half a Tuesday and then always work half a Saturday.
• Room for growth – We believe that everyone should be able to grow in their job — both as a professional and as a person. Therefore, each member of the team gets a clear, step-by-step overview of their progress, internal masterclasses, team summits, and more.