UX Research Director

About us

HighLevel is an AI-powered business operating system that gives agencies, entrepreneurs and SMBs the infrastructure to build, automate and scale. Today, HighLevel supports SMBs across 150+ countries, fueling community-driven growth rooted in real customer outcomes.To date, businesses operating on HighLevel have generated over $7 billion in ecosystem value, demonstrating the impact of shared infrastructure at scale. By centralizing conversations, automation and intelligence into one system, we help businesses move faster, reduce complexity and execute efficiently.Behind the platform, HighLevel powers more than 4 billion API hits and 2.5 billion message events daily. With 250 terabytes of distributed data, 250+ microservices and over 1 million domain names supported, our architecture is built for performance, resilience and long-term scalability.

Our People

With over 2,000 team members across 10+ countries, HighLevel operates as a global, remote-first organization built for speed and ownership. We value initiative, clarity and execution, creating space for ambitious people to build systems that support millions of businesses worldwide. Here, innovation thrives, ideas are celebrated and people come first, no matter where they call home.

Our Impact

Every month, HighLevel enables more than 1.5 billion messages, 200 million leads and 20 million conversations for the more than 1 million businesses we support. Behind those numbers are real people building independence, expanding opportunity and creating measurable impact. We’re proud to be a part of that.Learn more about us on our YouTube Channel or Blog Posts

About the Role

We are seeking a Director, UX Research (M5) who can make deep customer understanding a driving force in HighLevel's product and company strategy. You have spent 12+ years conducting and leading research for complex digital products, including 5+ years leading researchers or research programs, and are ready to set the research direction for a broad platform used by agencies, entrepreneurs and SMBs around the world.

This role reports to the Vice President of Product Design and is a member of Design Leadership. You will lead a small, senior research team of one or two researchers and remain a hands-on practitioner who personally leads the company's highest-stakes studies.

We expect candidates at this level to demonstrate exceptional research craft, strategic judgment, cross-functional influence and executive communication. You should be comfortable framing ambiguous business questions, choosing the right level of evidence for each decision and turning complex findings into clear direction for senior leaders.

Experience researching AI-powered, automation-heavy, CRM, marketing technology, platform or SMB software experiences is highly valuable. Experience using AI-powered tools for synthesis, analysis, documentation or workflow acceleration is expected.

What You'll Do

• Align Product, Design, Engineering, Data and Product Marketing leaders on a shared research agenda so teams invest in the highest-impact questions instead of running competing studies

• Connect customer evidence across research, product analytics, Product Marketing and customer-facing teams into one shared view of customer needs and opportunities

• Lead foundational research, including segmentation, jobs-to-be-done, customer journeys and agency and SMB operating models, that informs company and portfolio strategy

• Build and run Voice of the Customer programs that synthesize NPS, CSAT, support themes, sales feedback, customer councils and behavioral data into recurring, decision-ready insight

• Personally lead high-stakes, mixed-methods studies from problem framing through synthesis, recommendation and follow-through

• Scale research across teams by training designers and product managers, providing guardrails, templates and study reviews, and keeping democratized research rigorous

• Coach and develop the researchers on your team, setting clear expectations for craft, influence and impact

• Keep HighLevel executives informed through regular, concise readouts on customer insight, emerging risks and opportunities

• Track insights through to roadmap decisions and shipped changes, and report the impact research has on product and business outcomes

• Use AI-powered tools thoughtfully to accelerate synthesis and analysis while protecting research quality, privacy and customer trust

• Collaborate effectively across US and India time zones in a 100% remote environment

• Build and scale a high-performing UX Research team, owning talent capability, leadership pipeline, team structure, performance and career development standards, and resource allocation to meet evolving product and business priorities

What We Are Looking For

• 12+ years of relevant UX research, product research or mixed-methods research experience, including 5+ years leading researchers or research programs

• Proven experience leading research in complex B2B SaaS, platform or multi-product environments

• A strong body of work that demonstrates research strategy, methodological judgment, clear synthesis and measurable influence on product and business outcomes

• Expert command of qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews, field research, usability testing, survey design, segmentation, concept testing and longitudinal research

• Demonstrated experience leading foundational research that changed product roadmaps or company strategy, not only feature-level decisions

• Experience building Voice of the Customer programs and enabling non-researchers to conduct sound research through training, standards and review

• Strong understanding of research design, sampling, statistical concepts and the tradeoffs behind different levels of research confidence

• Proven ability to align Product, Design, Engineering, Data, Product Marketing and executive leaders around shared customer evidence

• Excellent executive communication, with experience briefing senior executives clearly and concisely

• Fluency with modern research tools such as UserTesting, Dovetail or similar platforms, along with AI-assisted analysis and synthesis workflows

How You Work

• You bring rigor to ambiguity without slowing teams down unnecessarily

• You know when more research is needed and when the team has enough evidence to move forward

• You create outsized impact from a small team by choosing the right problems and multiplying the research capability of others

• You move comfortably between company strategy, customer insight, business outcomes and hands-on research execution

• You build trust through warmth, candor, accountability, direct feedback and respect for your teammates as people

• You enjoy collaborating across time zones and cultural contexts, including with US- and India-based teammates

• You communicate in ways that help distributed teams work with clarity, care, trust and momentum

• You advocate for accessibility, inclusion, ethical research and AI experiences that remain aligned with customer goals

**Equal Employment Opportunity Information

**The company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. As an employer subject to affirmative action regulations, we invite you to voluntarily provide the following demographic information. This information is used solely for compliance with government recordkeeping, reporting, and other legal requirements. Providing this information is voluntary and refusal to do so will not affect your application status. This data will be kept separate from your application and will not be used in the hiring decision.