Hybrid UX Research Lead

at Black & Veatch

• Job title: UX Research Lead
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Overland Park, United States

About the role

• UX Research & Design Lead at Black & Veatch, focused on shaping experience strategies and orchestrating design across Agile teams to enrich digital products for a better user experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the discovery backlog: define research questions, methods (qual/quant), and learning objectives aligned to product strategy
• Lead continuous customer interviews, usability tests, and behavioral analytics; synthesize insights into actionable recommendations
• Maintain personas / Jobs To be Done, journey maps, and problem statements; validate assumptions early with prototypes and experiments
• Create low to high fidelity prototypes to validate UI interaction, workflow and assumptions
• Translate strategy into experience vision and north-star flows; decompose into incremental hypotheses and MVP slices for ART planning
• Ensure accessibility and inclusivity (e.g., WCAG standards) and non-functional requirements are reflected in Definition of Ready/Done
• Establish and evolve the design system (reusable design patterns, components, content guidelines) for consistency and speed at scale
• Actively participate in PI Planning, iteration planning, backlog refinement, system demos, and Inspect & Adapt workshops
• Partner with Product Managers/Product Owners to prioritize and accept UX stories; drive Built-In Quality and testability of experience outcomes
• Orchestrate design delivery across pods/squads; align capacity and commitments with the Digital Team structure (UX roles within product engineering pods)
• Design and operationalize multi-source feedback loops (direct, proxy, stakeholder, telemetry); maintain a traceable feedback log to decisions
• Run design reviews and outcome readouts; present insights and recommendations to leadership and cross-functional partners
• Contribute to DPOM governance rituals (e.g., WBRs, retrospectives), linking experience metrics to funding and prioritization
• Coach designers and researchers; upskill cross-functional teams in discovery and design methods
• Champion an empowered, cross-functional product team model; foster collaboration across engineering, product, data, QA, and security

Requirements

• Bachelor’s/Master’s in HCI, Design, Psychology, Information Science, or related field
• 10+ years in UX research/design with 3+ years leading teams or cross-functional initiatives
• Expert in human-centered design, Lean UX, and research methods (interviews, diary studies, surveys, usability testing, A/B tests)
• Experience delivering in Scrum or scaled Agile environments; SAFe certification (e.g., SAFe Agilist, SAFe POPM) preferred
• Ability to translate business strategy into actionable user stories
• Proficiency with rapid prototyping and collaboration tools (e.g., Figma, FigJam/Miro) and backlog tools (e.g., Jira/ADO)
• Strong systems thinking: ability to connect customer needs to architecture, constraints, and product economics
• Excellent storytelling and facilitation; able to align executives and squads around clear outcomes
• AI Awareness: Basic understanding of prompt engineering, RAG, and AI-driven decision systems

Benefits

• competitive compensation
• 401K match
• benefits that start day one
• flexible work schedules
• paid vacation and holiday time
• sick time
• dependent sick time
• adoption reimbursement
• tuition reimbursement
• vendor discounts
• employment referral program
• AD&D insurance
• pre-taxed accounts
• voluntary legal plan
• B&V Credit Union
• performance-based bonus program