About the role

We're building the research function from the ground up, and this is the person who builds it. As our first Senior UX Researcher, you'll establish the research foundation for three growing consumer brands: Closet by Design, Closet World, and Brio Water, and own the insights engine that drives product, design, and marketing decisions across all of them.

This isn't a role where research sits in a drawer. You'll be producing work that directly influences conversion rates, product strategy, and customer experience across complex e-commerce products. You'll work closely with the Creative Director and cross-functional stakeholders to make sure the team always knows what's working, what isn't, and what to do next.

If you're energized by building something new, comfortable holding complexity across multiple brands simultaneously, and genuinely motivated by helping a company grow through better understanding of its customers, this is your role.

About Our Brands

Closet by Design - Custom closet and organization solutions sold direct to consumers. Complex product configuration, high-consideration purchase, strong mobile traffic with conversion challenges.

Closet World - Retail and e-commerce closet solutions with a broad consumer base. Expanding into new digital programs with a growing focus on data-driven growth.

Brio Water - Premium water dispensing and hydration products. Pre-launch and early-stage growth; building audience understanding from near-zero baseline.

Each brand has its own audience, product complexity, and strategic priorities. You'll need to hold all three simultaneously and know when to apply insights across brands versus when to keep them separate.

What you'll do

Build the Research Foundation

• Establish research processes, methodologies, and tooling from the ground up, templates, repositories, cadences, and standards the team can rely on long-term
• Define how research insights are captured, organized, and made accessible across the organization
• Champion a research-informed culture across Creative, Product, and Marketing teams

Generate Ongoing Customer and Product Insights

• Plan and execute qualitative and quantitative research across all three brands, usability studies, user interviews, surveys, concept tests, journey mapping, and more
• Own analytics interpretation alongside tools like Google Analytics and heatmapping software, translating behavioral data into actionable design and product recommendations
• Develop and maintain deep understanding of each brand's customer personas, grounded in real data, not assumptions
• Identify friction points in the customer journey that are directly impacting conversion, especially on mobile

Deliver Monthly Research Reports

• Produce and present a bi-monthly research report shared across the design team and key stakeholders (Creative Director, brand leads, e-commerce leadership)
• Synthesize findings across brands into clear, prioritized insights, what's working, what's not, and what we should act on
• Translate complex data into narratives that non-technical stakeholders can understand and act on quickly

Support Product and Design Decision-Making

• Partner with the UI/UX team to ensure design decisions are grounded in user evidence, not gut feeling
• Feed insights directly into sprint planning, research should inform what gets prioritized, not just validate what's already built
• Collaborate with the Creative Director on new briefs, ensuring customer context is present from the start of every project

Qualifications

Experience

• 5+ years of UX research experience, with at least 2 years in a senior or lead capacity
• Proven track record across both qualitative and quantitative research methods
• Experience working across multiple products or brands simultaneously
• Background in e-commerce, consumer products, or DTC strongly preferred
• Familiarity with analytics tools (Google Analytics, heatmap/session recording tools), ability to pull and interpret data independently, not just receive reports

Skills

• Exceptional ability to communicate research findings to varied audiences, from designers to executives
• Comfortable owning an entire research project from scoping through synthesis and presentation
• Strong systems thinker, can design scalable research processes, not just one-off studies
• Able to operate without a playbook; comfortable in ambiguous, build-from-scratch environments
• Organized and self-directed, can manage multiple research streams across three active brands without dropping a thread

Mindset

• Genuinely motivated by business outcomes, you care that your research leads to better conversion, not just better-looking decks
• Calm under pressure; juggling three brands with different audiences and products doesn't rattle you
• Collaborative but opinionated, you'll push back when data contradicts a direction, respectfully and with evidence
• Builder mentality, excited to create something that didn't exist before, and invested in seeing it grow

Why This Role

• You're the first, what you build here sets the standard for how this company uses research going forward
• Direct line to decision-makers, your work goes to the Creative Director and brand leadership, not into a backlog
• Real business problems to solve, low conversion rates, unclear personas, untapped data - the gaps are real and the opportunity to have visible impact is immediate
• Path to grow, as the team scales, this role is positioned to grow into a research lead function

The pay range for this role is:

120,000 - 160,000 USD per year (Softline HQ)