Senior User Experience Researcher; Hybrid

About the Role

We are seeking a proactive Senior UX Researcher to shape customer‑ and banker‑facing experiences. This person will deliver actionable research that influences business decisions, drives innovation, and improves user experiences. The ideal candidate has experience researching digital products for both customer and employee audiences and collaborates with cross‑functional teams to create intuitive, inclusive, and business‑valued products aligned with real user needs.

Creates deep understanding and empathy around user needs across product teams, including designers, product managers, and engineers. Designs and executes primary research to explore user behaviors and motivations through surveys, ethnography, in‑depth interviews, concept testing, stakeholder interviews, workshop facilitation, usability testing, and heuristic evaluations. Translates insights into actionable recommendations that inform the development of new products and features and drive continuous innovation of existing experiences.

• Establish a consistent research discipline to generate deep insights into user interactions with modern financial products and strengthen understanding of current and prospective customers.
• Define user problem statements and align cross‑functional teams around them.
• Confidently engage teams through research practices, educate them throughout, and ensure findings are implemented.
• Apply best practices and methodological excellence across generative and evaluative mixed‑methods research.
• Provide guidance and mentorship to other researchers and apply appropriate rigor.
• Guide design leads on disciplined prioritization decisions, deciding what research to take on vs. defer, with judgment on where to say no.
• Employ a range of UX research methodologies such as surveys, ethnography, in‑depth interviews, concept testing, stakeholder interviews, workshop facilitation, usability testing, and heuristic evaluations.
• Perform sophisticated, rigorous analysis of research data with frameworks and meaningful insights.
• Build and maintain partnerships with Market Research and analytics teams to leverage existing insights and align research efforts.
• Communicate research results through storytelling to drive changes in business or experience strategy and shape a new vision for the future.
• Understand and adhere to the company’s risk and regulatory standards, policies, and controls.
• Identify risk‑related issues needing escalation to management.
• Promote an inclusive environment that supports belonging and reflects the M&T Bank brand.
• Maintain internal control standards, including timely implementation of audit points and any issues raised by external regulators.
• Complete other related duties as assigned.

• Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 5 years of related experience, or a combined minimum of 9 years of higher education or work experience including at least 5 years of related experience.
• Background in the user experience research field, designing and conducting user research studies and applying design‑thinking methodologies.
• Prior experience with innovative thinking, demonstrating the value of research and working with stakeholders to deliver results.
• Strong understanding of strengths and shortcomings of different research methods and when to apply them during product development.
• Experience dealing with ambiguity and using design research to bring clarity to abstract ideas.
• Experience with accessibility standards, cross‑platform issues, mobile user interfaces, and systems‑thinking.
• Experience using modern design, prototyping, and collaboration tools (e.g., Figma, User Testing, Miro, Jira).
• Experience interacting with multidisciplinary teams.
• Strong time‑management skills.
• Strong problem‑solving skills.
• Strong critical‑thinking skills.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong collaboration skills.

• Minimum of a master’s degree in a related field.
• Experience in survey design, including working knowledge of statistics and experimental design.
• Experience creating use cases, flow diagrams, prototypes, scenarios, and wireframes in the context of user…