Job Description

At Team Xbox, we are on a mission to bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone on the planet. We deliver on that vision by putting players at the center, enabling you to play the games you want, with the people you want, anywhere you want.


Xbox Player Services (XPS) is at the heart of our ambition to reach billions of players across the globe, ensuring that every player feels included and engaged across Xbox. We do this through our commitments to amplifying the voices of our players, building trusted relationships with all our players, and by delivering foundational services and critical operations for Microsoft Gaming.


As part of Xbox Players Services (XPS), Principal Xbox Research aims to understand & connect people through play. Play affords learning, creates purpose, and connects millions. Within gaming, our role is unique. We obsess over users and their unmet, uncommunicated needs; we listen to learn and represent what we discover to partner teams across Xbox.

We are seeking a Principal Xbox Researcher with a passion for generating foundational consumer insights to help drive the development of world-class entertainment experiences for the next generation of players worldwide. You will be joining a unique, diverse, well-respected team at Microsoft known for pioneering and institutionalizing the adaptation of psychological research methods to games and the entertainment industry.

Responsibilities

In this position, you\xe2\x80\x99ll partner with gaming stakeholders across the organization to shape the future of gaming through proactive research, consumer insights, and pushing the bounds of the organization to understand what is possible. You\xe2\x80\x99ll drive and build upon an understanding of the needs, wants, and desires of our customers while helping to envision future possibilities for gaming along long-term horizons. You will:

• Partner closely with leadership, design, & development teams to understand business and product goals and strategies
• Create, adapt, and drive research frameworks that support unique requirements of gaming experiences
• Drive foundational research to answer near to long-range strategy, business, and/or design questions and uncover unique insights, leveraging and triangulating both qualitative and quantitative methods (observation, interviews, journals, ethnography, participatory design, surveys, instrumentation, etc.)
• Develop research & participatory plans that involve and engage your product team partners and impact product vision, planning, design, and overall quality
• Communicate research insights across all levels of the organization through written reports and presentations
• Bring a wide range of research methods to your work and develop new methods where needed to evolve the desirability of our experiences
• Contribute your research and perspective through the entire product design cycle, from planning to implementation to post-release
• Partner with and leverage other researchers across a diverse team
• Mentor and help develop researchers on the team

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 
  Bachelor\'s Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 6+ years User Experience Research experience
  • 
    OR Master\'s Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 4+ years User Experience Research experience
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    OR Doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 3+ years User Experience Research experience
  • 
    o OR equivalent experience.
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  Minimum 6 years of hands-on experience conducting UX research or user-centered methodologies in technology and/or games & entertainment.
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  Demonstrated experience designing and executing research projects using established quantitative and/or qualitative methodological approaches (e.g. interviewing, ethnography, field studies, questionnaire development and survey research, experiments, usability studies, contextual inquiry, instrumentation, biometrics, etc.).

Preferred Qualifications:

• 
  Bachelor\'s Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 12+ years User Experience Research experience
  • 
    OR Master\'s Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 8+ years User Experience Research experience
  • 
    OR Doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field 5+ years User Experience Research experience
  • 
    OR equivalent experience.
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  Experience in cross-team collaboration
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  Experience in planning and executing on complex partner-facing initiatives
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  Written and oral communication skills
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  Experience in analyzing and presenting data to influence product design and implementation
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  Ability to distill complex ideas into succinct insights and impactful, persuasive storytelling
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  Ability to develop approaches to researching complex user experience problems
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  Experience with strategic foresight approaches, leading organizations through times of high uncertainty
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  Experience leading multi-disciplinary teams to envision different future states
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  Experience working in the video games industry, ideally within a game development studio
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  Experience with game design principles
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  Accessibility, diversity, equity, and/or inclusion user research experience

UX Research IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $133,600 - $256,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $173,200 - $282,200 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.


Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.