Senior Manager, AI, User Success

Position Overview

In Autodesk AEC Construction, our mission is to help teams meet the world’s rapidly expanding building and infrastructure needs while making construction more predictable, safe, and sustainable. Reporting to the Director, AEC, AI Research, User Success, the Senior Manager, AI Research, User Success leads the user research strategy for Autodesk’s next generation of AI‑powered product experiences. This role focuses on ensuring that AI capabilities are grounded in deep understanding of user needs, behaviors, and real‑world workflows, consistently informing product decisions and outcomes.

A core responsibility is to coordinate all user research efforts related to AI, creating a cohesive, outcome‑oriented agenda that drives differentiation and meaningful value. The role enables creation of AI experiences that help users flourish, informing design and measuring real‑world impact, delivering tangible value. It manages a team of approximately six AI‑focused user researchers, setting direction and ensuring scalable, impactful work.

Success means building a unified, high‑quality user research system that accelerates innovation and ensures that AI experiences deliver measurable value to users.

Location:

preference for candidates in Toronto, Canada, open to across Canada.

Travel: estimated at quarterly across North America.

• Define and lead the research strategy for AI‑powered experiences, aligning to product priorities and business outcomes
• Embed research into product development cycles, directly influencing roadmap decisions and prioritization
• Establish a unified approach that connects qualitative insight, behavioral data, and AI performance signals
• Apply Critical User Journeys (CUJs) to identify and prioritize high‑impact AI opportunities across workflows
• Ensure AI capabilities are designed as coherent, end‑to‑end experiences rather than isolated features
• Translate journey insights into product direction, guiding cross‑product integration and investment decisions
• Lead validation of AI capabilities within real‑world workflows, focusing on usability, effectiveness, and task success
• Define and measure user trust, adoption, and experience quality
• Drive continuous optimization through experimentation, feedback loops, and mixed‑method research
• Lead adoption of AI‑enabled research methods, including automated synthesis, AI‑assisted interviewing, and real‑time insight generation
• Build scalable systems that continuously learn from user interaction with AI‑powered features
• Experiment with emerging approaches to increase the speed, scale, and impact of research
• Lead and develop a team of ~6 AI‑focused researchers, setting direction and ensuring high‑impact delivery
• Coordinate research across initiatives, establishing shared methods, standards, and priorities
• Translate insights into clear, influential narratives that drive executive alignment and product decisions

• 12+ years of experience in user research, including leadership of research for complex, technology‑driven products
• Proven experience managing and developing research teams, with a track record of scaling impact through others
• Experience defining and executing research strategy across multiple teams or product areas
• Experience working on AI/ML‑driven products, with strong understanding of user experience challenges in AI systems
• Demonstrated experience applying journey‑based or systems‑level thinking (e.g., service design, journey management, end‑to‑end workflows)
• Strong experience integrating qualitative and quantitative research methods to drive product decisions
• Experience working cross‑functionally with Product, Engineering, Data Science, and Design in complex environments
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders
• Experience applying AI in research workflows or strong demonstrated interest in AI‑enabled research practices