UX Researcher (Web3)

UX Researcher

6-month contract · Remote

Location: Remote — United States, Central and Eastern Europe, or Southeast Asia, with sufficient working-hour overlap with the team

Type: 6-month contract $3000-$3500 per month - will consider more for extremely close fit candidates
Start: As soon as possible

ABOUT THE COMPANY

We're an early-stage fintech company building privacy-first financial products.

We have two products: a payroll platform that lets companies pay global teams in fiat or crypto privately, and a consumer financial application where people paid through the platform can swap, transfer and use their money without making their financial lives public by default.

Our payroll product is live and companies are running real pay cycles through it. The consumer product is next.

We're a small, remote team where research, design, product and engineering work closely together.

WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS

We need someone whose job is to keep us close to what users actually experience.

Payroll and crypto products become dangerous to design from assumptions.

A founder may understand how a payment flow is supposed to work; a payroll admin running salaries on Friday afternoon experiences it very differently.

We want those realities in the room when product decisions are made.

You'll speak to current customers, prospective customers and users every week, identify where trust or usability breaks down and turn what you learn into decisions the product and design teams can act on quickly.

This is not a research function that produces a 40-page deck and disappears.

Your work should change what we build.

WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH

You'll work directly with the founders, alongside our UI/UX Designer and development team.

There are no layers between research, design and the people shipping the product.

The relationship with the UI/UX Designer will be particularly close: you find and validate the problem; together, you turn that evidence into a better product.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Interview current customers and users every week, including payroll admins, finance leads, contractors and consumer-app users.
• Interview prospects and understand what stops them from buying, trusting or adopting the product.
• Observe people completing real payroll tasks and map the moments that create uncertainty, friction or fear.
• Run moderated and unmoderated usability testing before and after launch.
• Use task analysis and structured session observation to understand where users struggle and why.
• Use Jobs to Be Done where appropriate to clarify needs and desired outcomes.
• Use Kano or similar methods where useful to understand feature importance and satisfaction.
• Run first-click testing and tree testing to validate navigation and information architecture.
• Measure how trust perception changes as the product evolves through concept testing, comparative perception measures and repeated-use research.
• Triangulate qualitative research with product analytics and quantitative data.
• Set up lightweight research operations covering recruitment, incentives, consent and a searchable home for findings.
• Write short, clear research readouts with recommendations the team can act on immediately.
• Partner closely with design and engineering so research becomes shipped product rather than a research archive.

HOW YOU'LL WORK

• Operate in short research cycles that match the pace of product development.
• Use analytics and data-driven analysis to strengthen qualitative findings and prioritisation.
• Use AI where it genuinely improves research speed or analysis while keeping human judgement at the centre.
• Communicate clearly with founders, designers and engineers.
• Be comfortable challenging an assumption when the evidence points somewhere else.
• Work independently across time zones while keeping the team close to what you're learning.

We're small, remote and high-trust.

Strong EQ matters as much as independence. We want someone who can ask difficult questions, handle conflicting evidence and make participants feel heard without losing objectivity.

WHAT GREAT LOOKS LIKE

First 30 days: You've completed at least three meaningful rounds of customer or user research and surfaced insights that materially change something in the payroll or consumer product.

By 90 days: The team has a clear, evidence-backed view of the biggest friction and trust problems across both products, with priorities attached.

By the end of the engagement: Important product decisions are routinely grounded in user evidence, the research operation can keep running, and the team has a much clearer understanding of why users behave the way they do.

WHO YOU ARE

• You've run hands-on product or UX research for digital products and can demonstrate where your work changed a product decision.
• You're comfortable interviewing customers and prospects, including founders, finance operators and commercially important users.
• You know when to use generative research and when to use evaluative methods.
• You can run moderated and unmoderated usability studies.
• You're strong in task analysis and structured observation.
• You understand frameworks such as JTBD and Kano and methods such as first-click and tree testing, but care more about choosing the right method than displaying research vocabulary.
• You can combine qualitative findings with analytics and quantitative data.
• You can turn messy research into a concise recommendation that a designer, engineer or founder can act on.
• You're a strong AI generalist and already use AI to make parts of your workflow faster without outsourcing judgement.
• You're self-directed, commercially aware and comfortable operating without a large research organisation around you.

WHY YOU MIGHT TAKE THIS ROLE

At a larger company, research can sit several steps away from the people making product decisions.

Here, you can hear something from a user and discuss it directly with the designer, engineer or founder who can change it.

The six-month scope is concentrated: two products, real users, live payroll flows and a team actively looking for evidence that changes its mind.

If you want research to have a visible effect on what ships, that's the attraction.

INTERVIEW PROCESS

We want to move quickly and aim to complete the process in around a week.

Stage 1 — Initial conversation

Around 30 minutes. Your background, the research you've done, what you're looking for and whether the role makes sense on both sides.

Stage 2 — Founder conversation

Around 45–60 minutes. We'll go deeper into the products, users, questions we need answered and how research fits into product development.

Research assessment

After Stage 2, we'll give you a practical assessment designed to show how you frame a research problem, choose methods, interpret evidence and communicate a useful recommendation.

Stage 3 — Final conversation

Around 45 minutes. We'll discuss your approach to the first 30, 60 and 90 days, align on expectations and make sure the fit works on both sides.