Experience Researcher, Software Developer Experience Airbnb
San Francisco, CA

Job Description

Founded in 2008, Airbnb's mission is to create a world where people can belong through healthy travel that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable. Airbnb uniquely leverages technology to economically empower millions of people around the world to unlock and monetize their spaces, passions and talents to become hospitality entrepreneurs. Airbnb's accommodation marketplace provides access to 5+ million unique places to stay in more than 81,000 cities and 191 countries. With Experiences, Airbnb offers unprecedented access to local communities and interests through 15,000 unique, handcrafted activities run by hosts across 1,000+ cities around the world. Airbnb's people-to-people platform benefits all its stakeholders, including hosts, guests, employees and the communities in which it operates.

In order to build the world's most loved travel company, we need the world's most interesting and talented people. Are you one of them? If so, we want to talk to you!

Role & Responsibilities

Research has been part of Airbnb from the beginning, ever since Paul Graham told the Airbnb founders, "go to your users." As designers, the founders embraced this advice and got on a plane to meet with Airbnb hosts that very weekend. Since those early days, the value of research has been baked into Airbnb's product culture.

The Experience Research team's mission is to provide the robust, rich, and actionable research that teams need at every stage of the product development cycle. As a researcher, you are embedded with a team of engineers, PMs, designers and other cross-functional partners. You not only conduct best-in-class multi-method research, but you develop deep, research-driven product expertise.

Your expertise is in building products for software engineers or other highly technical users, and you can apply qualitative research methods (e.g., interviews, usability testing, diary studies, etc.) to this product space. You have a background or are familiar with coding, which helps you understand software development workflows and pain points. And, you love solving complex design challenges where humans, tooling, and technology meet.

* Inform and participate in product decisions from definition to launch (and after), working at both a strategic and tactical level.
* Conduct practical and impactful research across the product cycle, from formative to evaluative and everywhere in between.
* Bring insights about users by a variety of methods whether it be surveys, interviews, log analysis, usability studies, diary studies, ethnographic observation, or a new method you invent.
* Share findings with engineers, product managers, designers and others, creating a smarter, more informed and more empathetic product team.
* Participate in outreach to the company by teaching, telling stories, and creating experiences.

Requirements

* Masters or PhD in Human-Computer Interaction, Sociology, Psychology, Information Science, Computer Science (or similar), or equivalent experience.
* 8+ years industry experience
* Experience with qualitative and/or quantitative data collection and analysis
* Experience managing projects involving cross-functional teams.

Bonus Skills

* Experience coding in any programming language (Javascript, Java, Ruby, Python, HTML, CSS, etc.)
* Experience with SQL, ETL, data analysis
* Experience with cross-cultural products and international research
* Experience conducting research in highly technical domains and/or with expert users