Lead Design Researcher

Our Purpose

At Xero, we’re here to help you supercharge your business. We do this by automating routine tasks, surfacing actionable insights and connecting businesses with the right data, advisors and apps. When that happens, we’re not only making life better for small business, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

As a Lead Design Researcher, you’ll shape and lead impactful qualitative and quantitative research programs that connect cross-functional & senior stakeholders to key customer challenges.

Through understanding Xero’s competitive landscape and weaving together connections across studies and customer journey stages, you’ll deliver clear insights and recommendations that inspire change and ensure Xero’s strategies are grounded in a deep understanding of our customers.

• Qualitative research - You'll make use of a broad range of qualitative methods on large and complex projects. You’ll design and conduct effective interviews to uncover rich, meaningful insights and generate informative data.
• Quantitative Research - Bringing years of experience on complex quantitative studies, you’re confident crafting insightful surveys and harnessing data to recognise trends.
• Process & planning - Leveraging your strong planning skills, you’ll prioritise tasks, manage constraints, communicate progress, proactively manage change, and mitigate issues.
• Scoping work- You’ll proactively seek to understand the business context and interrogate research requests in order to pragmatically apply the appropriate research approach.
• Data analysis and interpretation - You’re skilled in identifying patterns, interpreting findings and generating new hypotheses. Collaborating across teams, you'll connect data and draw holistic conclusions.
• Communicate and influence - You'll craft concise, compelling presentations and confidently deliver clear, actionable recommendations that influence senior stakeholders and shape roadmaps and strategy.
• Practice improvement - You'll lead initiatives to improve the research practice. Advocating for research across the organization, you’ll build capability beyond the team, and champion ethical and inclusive research.

• As a Lead Design Researcher, success means forging trusted relationships with senior leaders, deeply understanding their challenges, and delivering impactful recommendations that shape roadmaps and strategy.
• By connecting and analysing data from diverse sources, you’ll link insights and uncover hidden opportunities to improve the customer journey. You’ll translate complex ideas into simple, actionable plans that inspire teams and resonate with a variety of audiences. Most importantly, your work will keep us focused on what truly matters: supercharging small businesses.

• A degree or training in a Design Research course — or equivalent portfolio of work to match.
• A portfolio of work that demonstrates high-quality and influential communication of insights, highlighting the business impact and taking ownership of reaching business outcomes.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to articulate design decisions and influence product strategy.
• A deep understanding of user-centred design principles and a passion for creating intuitive and engaging experiences.
• Proven experience coaching and mentoring design teams, fostering a collaborative and high-performing environment.
• Ideally, experience working in a fast paced, agile product environment

Why Xero?

Offering very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, private medical insurance, gym passes, employee resource groups, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices, flexible working, and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.