Junior UX Researcher

Junior User Researcher About Wavytalk

At Wavytalk, we believe hair is more than just style—it's a language of self-expression. We're an expression-first hair brand creating innovative tools that empower everyday appearance artists to experiment, evolve, and look and feel their best with confidence.

We are on a mission to design intuitive hair tools that make styling effortless, joyful, and safe—protecting hair health while unlocking every possibility. Whether straightening, curling, or adding volume, our tools are engineered for versatility, performance, and care without compromise.

We're looking for a passionate Junior User Researcher to join our dynamic team. As we scale UX department and product offerings, understanding our users deeply—their aspirations, their routines, their frustrations, and their moments of joy—is critical to creating tools that truly empower self-expression.

The Junior User Researcher is responsible for
participant recruitment, qualitative research execution, and research process support and optimization
, providing high-quality and actionable user insights to the Product, Design, and Marketing teams. The ultimate goal is to enhance product experience, user satisfaction, and market fit, while building a solid foundation for future growth into a Senior User Researcher or Research Lead role. This role will report to the U.S. Senior UX Researcher.

This is a
hybrid role requiring 4 days per week in-office and 1 day remote
.

Travel:
Occasional domestic and travel (approximately 10-15% of time)

1. Establish and optimize an efficient
user recruitment process and participant pool
for the U.S. market (or designated region)
2. Independently assist with or lead several
small- to medium-scale qualitative research projects
(e.g., interviews, focus groups, usability tests) and deliver clear summary reports
3. Support senior researchers in
cross-functional collaboration
, including project scheduling, coordination, data organization, and insight synthesis

1. Develop into a
strong candidate for a Senior User Researcher
, capable of conducting
end-to-end qualitative research
--- from study design, recruitment, and execution to analysis and actionable outcomes
2. Propose and implement improvements to the
user research system
, including methodologies, toolsets, and workflow architecture
3. Expand
recruitment channels
and diversify participant sources to support
rapid validation and fine-grained research initiatives

• Write recruitment criteria and screeners for each study
• Design and distribute recruitment ads or invitations
• Coordinate with participants, handle incentive arrangements, and manage scheduling and attendance for in-person or online sessions
• Plan, build, and maintain a U.S.
  
  -based target user database covering diverse cities, age groups, backgrounds, and usage scenarios
• Establish long-term recruitment partnerships and channels

• Support interview, usability test, focus group, and prototype evaluation sessions by coordinating logistics, taking notes, transcribing, tagging recordings, and assisting with session documentation
• Participate in designing qualitative research processes, optimize sampling and recruitment bias control, refine research cadence, and continuously improve efficiency and quality

• Under guidance from senior researchers or PMs, create and organize data tables, visual charts, user quotes, and prepare presentation materials (slides or written summaries)
• Take on preliminary analysis tasks in select projects (qualitative coding, thematic grouping, matrix comparison, user journey mapping, etc.) and assist in generating insights and recommendations

• Conduct regular process retrospectives after projects, identify bottlenecks and improvements, and draft process documentation, tool usage guides, and internal training materials
• Drive standardization, modularization, and tool-based optimization of the…