User Experience Researcher, AI-Augmented Research

Nelnet Company Overview

Nelnet is a diversified and innovative company committed to enriching lives through the power of service as a student loan servicer, professional services company, consumer loan originator and servicer, payments processor, renewable energy solutions, and K-12 and higher education expert. For over 40 years, Nelnet has been serving its customers, associates, and communities. The perks of working at Nelnet go beyond our benefits package.

When you join the Nelnet team, you're part of a community invested in the success of each individual. That support comes through in our work, as we are united by our mission of creating opportunities for people where they live, learn, and work.

Are you driven to translate quantitative and qualitative user experience data into opportunities for customer experience innovation — and to build the AI tooling that lets a small research team do it faster and deeper? Nelnet is seeking a curious, experienced User Experience Researcher to join our internal design team. Beyond running best-in-class research, this role owns and extends our agentic UX synthesis pipeline — tooling that drafts plans, synthesizes qualitative and quantitative data, and produces reports under the direction of an expert researcher who ensures every input and output is relevant, accurate, and free of bias.

The AI accelerates the work; it doesn't replace the judgment. As a UX researcher, you'll immerse yourself in a close-knit team to solve design challenges through data and analysis, turning what you find into a story stakeholders act on rather than just a report they read.

• Work collaboratively within a cross-functional team, and with other analytical teams, to develop a holistic understanding of customers' needs, values, and experiences.
• Extract key experience, customer, and usability insights from large sets of quantitative experience data.
• Identify the best research approaches to get the right answers based on research questions, timing, and resources.
• Practice problem-finding — recognize when stakeholders don't yet know what they don't know, bring the right people together, and propose the research needed to close that gap before being asked.
• Own and extend our agentic UX synthesis pipeline — maintaining existing agents, building new ones, and identifying where research tasks can move to an AI-first or AI-assisted workflow, while personally validating that agent-generated inputs and outputs are relevant, accurate, and unbiased before they inform a decision.
• Turn research and synthesis work into reusable templates and standards that both people and agents can apply consistently.
• Work in accordance with the UX team's established methods, while also helping us grow and evolve those methods — bring your ideas.
• Transform raw scores into practical numbers and figures.
• Prepare clear research reports and synthesize findings into actionable insights and recommendations for stakeholders, using AI tooling to accelerate turnaround without sacrificing rigor.
• Translate research findings into implications for product roadmap and company priorities, helping stakeholders see not just what was found, but what it means for what comes next.
• Travel periodically to other Nelnet offices for team collaboration and to conduct on-site research.

• Bachelor's degree in a user research-related discipline (human-computer interaction, cognitive science, human factors, psychology, etc.) or equivalent experience.

• Deep expertise in UX research methodologies for software/web-based products, with demonstrated impact on the products you've worked on and a track record of driving innovation and moving projects forward in ambiguous, not-yet-defined situations.
• Experience with a variety of UX research methods such as card sorts, usability testing, A/B testing, user interviews, surveys, diary studies, contextual observations, first click testing.
• Demonstrated experience incorporating AI to appropriately assist with research activities — building or maintaining agents, or automating parts of the research process to improve speed, depth, or quality, while knowing where human…