Principal UX Researcher

Join us as we work to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all.

Position Summary:

We are looking for a Principal UX Researcher to join athenahealth's Mobile UX team, someone who can inform our forward-facing strategy through "left-diamond" discovery work and occasionally extend feature teams' capacity for early-stage concept testing. This role will also be expected to travel domestically a handful of times per year for onsite research with our customers, shadowing clinicians who use our products.

This is a hybrid role based in Boston, MA, and it reports to the UX Design Senior Manager within Clinicals.

About the Team:
The Mobile UX team within athenahealth Clinicals leads the user experience design for many of our company’s clinician-facing iOS and Android mobile apps—including the #1 rated mobile EHR on the App Store! Our team also designs experiences for ambient and several AI- or voice-based experiences, as well as any relevant (desktop) workflows within our web application to ensure a cohesive cross-platform user experience.

This team and surrounding departments are based in India.

• Own discovery research and experience measurement initiatives.
• Build deep understanding of healthcare and clinician workflows in order to inform product and design strategy.
• Define research questions, hypotheses, success measures, and appropriate qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-method approaches to evaluate opportunities and experiences.
• Navigate ambiguity with expert problem framing and thoughtful consideration of risks, dependencies, and business constraints.
• Plan and conduct research across the product development lifecycle, including strategic discovery, concept evaluation, experience measurement through a variety of metrics, onsite customer shadowing, and early-stage feature research.
• Synthesize research findings into clear insights, recommendations, models, and narratives that support evidence-based product and design decisions.
• Present research findings to varying audiences.
• Create frameworks, prototypes, models, or other artifacts that communicate research insights and experience concepts.
• Develop a long-term vision backed by user research evidence and outline practical, phased plans that connect research questions to user and business outcomes.
• Partner with UX designers, product managers, engineering teams, and other stakeholders to translate research findings into product strategy and continued action.

• Lead onsite customer research from planning through insight delivery:
  Identifying research needs, coordinating participant recruitment, conducting contextual observation, synthesizing findings, and presenting results.
• Advance research practices across the Mobile UX team by sharing methods, coaching partners on research approaches, improving processes, and contributing expertise on emerging UX research practices/industry trends.
• Apply AI tools thoughtfully to research planning, synthesis, analysis, and problem definition; evaluate where AI can improve research workflows while applying appropriate human judgment to findings, limitations, and implications.
• Support product teams with early-stage concept research when additional research capacity or expertise is needed.
• Plan and facilitate workshops that help teams interpret research, define opportunities, and align on next steps.
• Build effective working relationships across multidisciplinary teams and organizational boundaries.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Psychology, Computer Science, Business, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years…