Job Description

User Experience Researcher

(Full-time, Remote)

About Us

UpTogether is a national organization of individuals across the country with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and identities who share a passion for social justice and racial equity.  Our mission is to recognize, highlight and invest in the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of people in undervalued communities and partner with government and philanthropy to do the same.

After working with thousands of families since our founding in 2001, at UpTogether, we are certain people don’t live in poverty because they are lazy, uneducated, or mismanage money, as stereotypes would indicate. Instead, the poverty cycle, which disproportionately impacts Black and Latinx communities, can be traced to well-intentioned but inadequate governmental and charitable policies and practices that rely on a traditional top-down approach.

UpTogether’s  Strengths Based Approach (SBA) includes:

1. Community: We honor the strengths and initiatives of people living in undervalued communities and promote the role social networks within these communities play in helping people accomplish their goals and achieve long-term socioeconomic mobility.
2. Capital: We invest in our members with unrestricted cash in recognition of the initiatives they are taking to improve their lives.
3. Choice: We trust that people in undervalued communities know what’s best and are capable of making decisions for themselves and their families.

UpTogether reveals and accelerates the initiative people are taking to improve their lives.

As a community, a movement, and a platform, we use the power of information—compelling insights and personal success stories—to transform stereotypes, beliefs, practices, and policies. Together with our members, we are championing a community-led movement to boost economic and social mobility in communities that have been undervalued and underinvested in for far too long.

At UpTogether, we work towards these values:

• Community: We honor the strengths and initiatives of people living in undervalued communities and promote the role social networks within these communities play in helping people accomplish their goals and achieve long-term socioeconomic mobility.
• Impact: We test and scale strategies for systems adoption of a strength-based approach to accelerate socioeconomic mobility for people living at or below the poverty line in the U.S.

• Collaboration: We center the lived experiences of families in undervalued communities and engage the knowledge, experience, and perspectives of our board, partners, and staff to build and grow a strength-based approach to end poverty.

• Racial Equity: We are committed to being an anti-racist organization, and we promote anti-racist policies that eliminate the racial wealth divide.

• Leadership: We acknowledge that leadership is not based on a title and honor the many forms in which it appears. We celebrate leadership that embodies all of our organizational values, driving us to act against the dominating deficit-based approach to fighting poverty.

• Choice: We trust that people living at or below the poverty line know what’s best and are capable of making decisions for themselves and their families.

The Position
UpTogether is seeking a full-time user experience researcher to support the development of our technology platform, UpTogether. The user experience researcher will be responsible for conducting generative and evaluative user interaction research with UpTogether stakeholders including members, non-profit partners, government agencies, and donors.

The ideal candidate will be interested in exploring not only the way that UpTogether can facilitate financial capital investments, but also capable of unearthing the more cerebral (and  perhaps more rewarding) question of what it means to support meaningful social capital exchanges  between members on UpTogether.

The user experience researcher will report directly to the Director of User Experience and will work with our designers, engineers, support team, and communications teams to ensure products are being designed  with input from all relevant stakeholders.

This is a remote position (must be based in the United States). The successful candidate will have a reliable internet connection and functional work environment, including a fully functional computer (laptop or desktop) with video conferencing capabilities.

Role & Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain a user research roadmap that is aligned with/informing the long-term product roadmap
• Collaborate with the Product Manager to define research needs across the product roadmap, including evaluative research needed for feature releases, after product launches, and to support longer-term product decision-making.
• Work with UX Content Designer to research and test platform copy (microcopy, transactional copy, notifications, etc)
• Work with the Director of UX, the Product Manager, the Director of Support, and the VP of MCs to strengthen member feedback loops throughout the organization so that their feedback is heard, considered, and ultimately acted upon.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to thrive in a remote work environment; self-directed; proactively reaches out; responsive; comfortable in a virtual setting
• Ability to thrive in a fast-changing environment, flexible in the pursuit of goals
• Demonstrated commitment to, or passion for, our mission; deep belief and trust in the innate capabilities of families with low incomes and their communities; willingness to engage in conversations aimed at addressing erroneous stereotypes about low-income people and people of color
• A deep belief in and operates according to UpTogether’s Core Values of Community, Impact, Collaboration, Racial Equity, Leadership, and Choice

Ideal Candidate

• Academic background in user generative and evaluative experience research, qualitative research, ethnographic research,  human centered design, and/or related disciplines.
• Training in facilitating focus-groups and conducting usability tests
• Ability to collaborate with the design and content team to develop low-fidelity mock-ups for user testing and design reference.
• Experience translating user experience into actionable feedback for designers and engineers.
• Personal connection to UpTogether’s mission.

Compensation
This is a full-time position with a competitive benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, 401(k), and vacation. Salary range is $75,000–95,000.

Inclusion Statement
We strive to create a community that embraces equity, diversity, and inclusion, and we support the efforts of others to build such communities. We encourage all qualified and interested persons to apply, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

How to Apply

Job Categories: Equal Opportunities. Job Types: Full-Time. Job Tags: design, economic equity, non-profit, racial equity, user experience, and UX. Salaries: 80,000 - 100,000.

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