UX Researcher (Growth)

Tailscale is making safe connection effortless by delivering software that makes it easy to securely interconnect people and their devices, no matter where they are. From hobbyists to multinational corporations, teams of every size use Tailscale each day to protect their networks, share access to internal tools, and more. We're building a future for the Internet that's easy, sensible, and safe, like it used to be. Founded in 2019 and fully distributed, we're backed by Accel, CRV, Insight, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital.

This is a dedicated growth research role. You'll run studies — usability testing, survey research, experimental studies — and collaborate on findings with the Product Growth team. The role is specifically focused on growth-related product surfaces, onboarding flows, acquisition and activation funnels, and the questions that emerge from the growth team's experiment pipeline. It is not focused on generative research for new product development; you will be helping tune and refine delivery of value, though you will partner with other researchers to identify and address fundamental product issues that limit product-led growth.

You'll report to the design manager and work most closely with the Growth PM and Growth Designers on a day-to-day basis. The staff UX researcher will be your primary resource for methods and bigger-picture research context. The role is designed to grow from running studies from the team's pipeline and building domain expertise, towards owning the research agenda for growth-related areas with increasing independence.

Research

Run growth research studies. Your core responsibility is conducting research that supports the growth team's experiment pipeline and tactical questions.

• Own the full study lifecycle for growth research: scoping, recruiting, conducting, analyzing, and communicating results.

• Design studies and instruments to conduct evaluation and diagnostic discovery for adoption experiences. This includes:

• Behavioural research: moderated and unmoderated usability tests for both formative and evaluative goals. You should be comfortable with experimental methods and able to navigate quantitative statistics for user research.

• Interviews, mixed methods, and longitudinal studies (eg diary studies) with users and representative populations.

• Standalone surveys and feedback forms (triggered at different parts of the adoption lifecycle)

• Analyse behavioural data available from logs and use that to inform research thinking, validate hypotheses, and triangulate with experimental/unmoderated test data.

• Look through other data (community forums, feedback forms, etc.) to proactively identify research opportunities

• Identify user needs during trial, proof of concept, and adoption phases

• Model and map adoption behaviours, and define personas accordingly

• Over time, work towards surfacing research opportunities independently and managing a research program for the growth team.

Partner with the growth team. You'll work directly with the Growth PM and Growth Designers to translate hypotheses into study designs and bring findings back in actionable formats.

• Help the growth team test and validate designs.

• Identify frictions and problems with product adoption.

• Based on research insights, suggest experiment and design ideas.

• Work in tandem with the growth team's experiment and A/B testing cadence.

• Communicate often and quickly about ongoing work, and involve them deeply in the research process as appropriate

Domain expertise

Build