UX Researcher (Senior/Staff-level)

Synthesia is the world’s leading AI video platform for business, used by over 90% of the Fortune 100. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in London, with offices and teams across Europe and the US. As AI continues to shape the way we live and work, Synthesia develops products to enhance visual communication and enterprise skill development, helping people work better and stay at the center of successful organizations. Following our recent Series E funding round, where we raised $200 million, our valuation stands at $4 billion. Our total funding exceeds $530 million from premier investors including Accel, NVentures (Nvidia's VC arm), Kleiner Perkins, GV, and Evantic Capital, alongside the founders and operators of Stripe, Datadog, Miro, and Webflow. Synthesia is moving from a single product to a multi-product platform, and research is about to become one of the pillars that determines whether we get that transition right. You'd be joining as our first full-time UX researcher, working directly with product, design, and engineering on the bets that will define what Synthesia looks like over the next few years, including a new real-time, agentic product where we're figuring out an entirely new modality as we build it. This is a Senior IC role. You'll own research end-to-end and shape how the function itself takes form. WHY NOW We've validated the appetite for research. Persona and jobs mapping shaped the first version of our newest product, and there's a strong pull from PMs, designers, and leadership for more. What we don't have yet is a full-time researcher who can operate across the whole product portfolio. The next six months contain some of the highest-stakes decisions we'll make: how the assistant experience should evolve, what drives adoption of the new product, and how we activate users in their earliest moments. Research should be shaping the direction on all three. WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING - Running a combination of strategic and tactical qualitative research across our product portfolio, from generative discovery through evaluative studies on live product experiences - Holding a macro view of where research can create the most leverage, and moving fluidly between product areas based on where your expertise is most needed - Building out a participant panel and ReOps practices so recruiting stops being a bottleneck, and shaping the light research operations we need as we scale - Influencing how PMs, designers, and leadership frame problems. This role has a real thought leadership and change management element, and pure execution won't be enough - Partnering closely with our Product Data team; you'll bring the qualitative depth alongside their quantitative work, together forming the insight backbone that feeds into product and exec decisions - Presenting findings to executives and shaping decisions at the top of the company - Coaching designers and PMs on lightweight research practice where it's the right call WHO YOU ARE You've been the only researcher on a technical team before, or something close to it. You're comfortable defining your own priorities, negotiating what to work on, and translating fuzzy strategic questions into research that actually moves decisions. You're a qualitative researcher at heart, but you're fluent with data, comfortable reading it, comfortable building a survey when one is called for, and comfortable pushing back when a number is being over-interpreted. You know when to reach for a method and when to reach for a conversation. You've navigated the delicate parts of B2B research, recruiting customers without stepping on Sales relationships, running studies with users who are also account contacts, and building trust that lets you keep going back to the well. You can hold your own with executives. You're direct, you form views, and you bring people along with clear thinking rather than volume of output. YOU MAY BE A GOOD FIT IF YOU BRING - Significant experience as a UX or product researcher, ideally including time as the only researcher on a team - B2B SaaS experience is strong plus, though we'll relax this for someone exceptional - Strong qualitative toolkit across strategic and evaluative research, with the ability to build and run your own surveys when needed - Experience with, or a strong instinct for, research operations, especially participant recruiting and panel building - Comfort influencing senior stakeholders and shaping the direction of a team, not just its outputs - A pragmatic view of AI in research practice. You use it where it earns its place, and you're not precious about tooling - Understanding of the inherent usability and product challenges found in AI-native products Even if you don't tick every box, do apply anyway. LOCATION London, flexible, hybrid role from our office nr Great Portland St Station. OUR CULTURE At Synthesia we’re passionate about building, not talking, planning or politicising. We strive to hire the smartest, kindest and most unrelenting people and let them do their best work without distractions. Our work principles serve as our charter for how we make decisions, give feedback and structure our work to empower everyone to go as fast as possible. You can find out more about these principles here. https://www.notion.so/How-we-work-at-Synthesia-f794caa72f8446efb6be22b551ce0fa2?pvs=21   GLOBAL BENEFITS: - You will be compensated well with a generous salary and equity. - You get 25 days of annual leave + local holidays. - Regular team offsites where you’ll get to collaborate with the product & engineering team in person. - Work from home budget - Work from anywhere policy of 60 days per year - Generous referral scheme - Enhanced parental leave - maternity leave includes 16 weeks at full pay, and paternity leave includes 5 weeks at full pay (if your country’s government scheme offers more generous support, you receive whichever is greater - our enhanced policy or the local statutory benefit)   BENEFITS SPECIFIC TO UK: - Private healthcare via AXA for you with a discount for dependants - 5% pension match - Team lunches Tuesday-Friday in the office