Senior UX Researcher - REMOTE - (Contract, Contract to hire, or Full Time Employee)

Overview

SmartBiz is on a mission to transform small business lending.

Our industry-defining marketplace enables small businesses to access the affordable capital they need to thrive, and banks the ability to efficiently meet the unique needs of their SMB customers. To date, SmartBiz has channeled over $8.6 billion of capital to over 235,000 small businesses across the country, and over 50% of loans on our platform have gone to women-owned, minority, or veteran businesses.

Senior UX Researcher

We are excited this will be the first UX Researcher hire at SmartBiz. We understand the value of this role on our team and we look forward to your guidance leading generative and evaluative research efforts which will ensure that we deeply understand our customer pain points and needs.

As a result of your 5+ years of experience as a Senior UX Researcher, you are familiar with working across various initiatives and prioritizing both short-term projects and long-term strategy. You’re experienced in Lean UX and excited to integrate research into an agile environment. You clearly communicate and evangelize insights across the company so we can better understand our customers. You understand the importance of asking insightful questions and collaborating closely with product, engineering, and other stakeholders to gather the actionable insights we need to make our product experience successful. You are interested in building out research practices and systems to support product growth and will help develop research as a core competency at SmartBiz. Your experience in service design or multi-sided marketplaces are an added benefit in our industry.

You’ll be joining a team of 5, soon to be 7. (We’re also hiring a Senior Product Designer!) Lauren, the Head of Design, is passionate about our mission and is focused on creating a culture that is supportive, innovative, and focused on doing meaningful work that we can be proud of. Her professional background spans business, user experience, and coaching. These experiences have shaped her open, collaborative, and personal management style. She loves creating environments for talented people to do their best work while they grow personally and professionally.

How You Will Make An Impact:

• Partner closely with product managers, product designers, engineering, and other stakeholders to conduct appropriate research across product discovery and solution definition
• Lead generative and evaluative research efforts to ensure we deeply understand our customer pain points
• Prioritize qualitative and quantitative research needs across multiple initiatives
• Advise and mentor others to ensure appropriate research is being done and the best methods are being used
• Co-shape both long-term customer experience strategy and short-term product solutions by grounding decisions in needs and actionable insights
• Build out research practices & systems to support product growth across the company

What We Are Looking For:

• 5+ years of professional experience as a UX Researcher with a portfolio that demonstrates past work experience and deliverables (e.g. case studies, presentations, workshop content, etc.)
• Knows how to integrate research into product and design roadmaps
• Track record of conducting qualitative and quantitative user research
• Combines deep empathy, natural curiosity, and methodological rigor
• Desire to do hands-on research as well as mentor others

Opportunities & Benefits We Will Provide:

• Clear path to an IPO and an opportunity to help us through the journey to becoming a public company
• Opportunity to help redefine small business banking
• Competitive salary and equity in a fast-growing start-up
• 100% paid medical, dental, and vision benefits for you and your dependents
• 100% paid life and disability insurance
• 401k plan
• Work from anywhere in the United States; we're a fully distributed company, and we provide the tools, culture, and support to make your work setup work for you

More About SmartBiz:

• 50% + of the loans funded by our banks are for women-owned, minority, or veteran businesses
• American Banker's Best Places to Work in Financial Technology in 2017, 2020, and 2021
• TechBullion named SmartBiz as one of the 5 Best Fintech Companies to Work For in 2019
• #313 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. in 2018
• Named one of the Best Places to Work and one of the Bay Area’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies by the San Francisco Business Times
• A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and rated "excellent" by review websites TrustPilot, Consumer Affairs, and Google

The company has raised $47 million in venture funding. Investors include Venrock, Investor Growth Capital, and First Round Capital.

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SmartBiz Loans is an Equal Opportunity employer and proud to provide equal employment opportunity to all job seekers without regard to any status protected by applicable law.

California residents can learn more about how we use your information by visiting https://sites.google.com/view/smartbizloans-employment-ccpa

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