Qualitative Research Specialist (ASL​/Deaf Community Research

Qualitative Research Specialist Focused On Deaf Community Research

Come be a part of our mission and make a meaningful and positive impact with the industry leading provider of language services for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing!

Full time benefits include paid vacation time and paid sick time and paid holidays, 401k 6% match with immediate vesting, nationwide medical insurance plans and coverage (medical, dental/orthodontia, vision), Tele Doc, HSA company match, 3 medical plan options including a low deductible PPO medical plan offering, employee assistance program, engaged employee resource groups, outstanding learning and career development opportunities.

Pay range: actual pay may vary up or down depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for incentive compensation.

* Applicants must be legally eligible to work in the United States to be considered. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role *

Job summary:

as a qualitative research specialist focused on Deaf community research, you will lead high-trust, ASL-first qualitative research for AI-powered sign language products. This role sits within the insights function and helps the company deeply understand Deaf users, communication access needs, cultural context, product expectations, and trust signals across real-world experiences. This role is not just about running interviews or usability studies.

It is about building respectful, rigorous, and culturally fluent research practices with Deaf communities - especially in areas where video-based research, ASL communication, privacy, consent, and participant trust matter deeply.

Your work will help shape how the company defines effective communication, trusted interpretation experiences, accessibility quality, and meaningful AI-assisted communication outcomes in practice. While the role is centered on Deaf community research, it also incorporates learning from communication stakeholders across the full interaction system, including interpreters, hearing participants, accessibility leaders, customer decision-makers, and organizational stakeholders involved in real-world communication interactions.

This role increases the depth and velocity of user, customer, and ecosystem understanding while ensuring Deaf community input is not treated as performative feedback, but as a structured and meaningful part of how product and model decisions are made.

Essential duties and responsibilities include leading high-signal qualitative discovery and evaluative research with Deaf users and broader communication stakeholders, partnering with fellow researchers, linguists and sign language data analysts to evolve shared research language, participant-validated survey instruments, and systems that connect qualitative insight to measurement and long-term learning, designing and moderating ASL-first qualitative research that is culturally fluent and reflects Deaf user experience, language access, communication context, and community expectations, evolving video-based research protocols by improving practices for consent, privacy, storage, retention, accessibility, participant rights, and ethical handling of recordings, ensuring research methods and materials are culturally and linguistically accessible, accurately interpreted, and aligned with participants' understanding and research goals, owning qualitative components of longitudinal tracking, including diary studies, qualitative CSAT drivers, and participant narratives over time, partnering with the fellow researcher on connecting qualitative insights to survey design, behavioral signals, reporting, and longer-term equivalency goals, helping maintain a healthy ASL user panel in partnership with Research Operations, including shaping recruitment inputs, engagement practices, session standards, communication norms, reciprocity, and overall participant experience quality, interfacing with interpreter and expert communities as needed, including setting guidelines for when ASL-direct sessions are appropriate and when interpreters, CDIs, or expert reviewers are required,…