Lead, User Intelligence Research

Lead, User Intelligence Research

Manager (Individual contributor) delivering User Intelligence Research to support select product areas within a tower/domain.

This is a Hybrid position, 3 days per week onsite.

Capital One’s Experience Design (XD) organization is focused on co‑creating memorable, meaningful customer and associate experiences that build our brand with humanity and drive business advantage. As the User Intelligence Research Lead for your product areas, you will be responsible for accelerating learning velocity by supporting a structured, systems‑oriented human intelligence system.

You will execute the Research organization’s vision: shifting from discrete, episodic UX studies to structured, connected research efforts to build cumulative user intelligence. You will plan and conduct research studies, utilize AI agents/skills, and enable human access platforms to support discovery, rapid testing, and assessment of user experiences. This is a high‑level individual contributor role that requires mastery of project leadership, technical fluency, business acumen, and the ability to produce actionable insights and encourage activation to ensure the development of useful and usable experiences.

• Build cumulative user intelligence: plan and conduct connected studies and establish data acquisition mechanisms that contribute to a collective body of user intelligence that fuels product teams’ ongoing planning and decision‑making.
• Provide rapid testing within the product development lifecycle: utilize and evolve research agents and research platforms to accelerate learning velocity, extracting insights from existing intelligence repositories and conducting rapid discovery, concept, content, and usability testing.
• Support continuous discovery: partner with research ops to enable product teams to access their users to maximize empathy and understanding.
• Support UX measurement: partner with CX, data scientists, analysts, and designers to identify domain‑specific UX metrics; assist in developing mechanisms to collect/measure UX metrics and conduct analysis using UX and other metrics to identify critical correlations between user behavior and business success.
• Conduct data triangulation & synthesis: utilize behavioral analytics, quantitative data, and qualitative insights to produce actionable insights.

• Results focus: work independently to achieve business‑critical outcomes; take full ownership of the intelligence research learning agenda and decision‑making.
• Influence: act as a subject‑matter expert to inspire teams to adopt research methodologies and activate insights.
• Collaboration:
  
  build productive partnerships with analysts, design, product, and engineering; seek out diverse data sources to ensure a holistic view of the customer.
• Communication: translate complex data and behavioral findings into compelling narratives for senior stakeholders; ensure clarity in two‑way dialogue across functions.

• At least 3 years of professional experience in User Experience Research, Data Science, or Customer Experience Research.
• At least 3 years of experience aggregating, collecting, and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data.
• At least 2 years of experience leading complex, multi‑stakeholder projects or research programs.

• 4+ years of experience in User Intelligence, Human Factors, or behavioral data analysis.
• Experience conducting structured, quantitative jobs‑to‑be‑done studies.
• Experience building automated research workflows.
• Proven track record of triangulating multiple data sources (behavioral analytics, survey data, and primary research) to inform product roadmaps.
• Advanced degree in Human Factors, HCI, Statistics, Data Science, or Behavioral Economics.

McLean, VA: $164,800 - $188,100 for Manager, Design;
New York, NY: $179,700 - $205,100 for Manager, Design;
Richmond, VA: $149,800 - $171,000 for Manager, Design. Candidates hired in other locations will receive the salary range associated with that location.

This role is eligible to earn performance‑based incentive compensation, which may include cash bonus(es)…