Experience Research and Design Lead

How will this role impact First Command?

Our goal in Marketing is to effectively communicate what makes First Command unique to the market we serve so that prospective clients will make First Command the first place they turn in order to plan for their financial security. The User Experience Researcher & Designer will be a key a member of the Experience Design and broader Marketing team.

In this role, you will create understanding and empathy around user needs, stated and unstated, for First Command, including designers, product managers, developers, and management. You will do so by conducting primary research, exploring the behaviors and motivations of our users through methods like field visits, surveys, usability testing, user interviews, card sorting, ethnography, and data analysis. Additionally, you will build designs and convey them along with research to stakeholders. A key metric for success in this role will be the ability to influence stakeholders.

The financial services industry is highly competitive, but we believe that First Command provides a unique value proposition for our nation’s military families and therefore must sharpen our insights so that how we approach and communicate with clients and prospects makes our value proposition relevant.

What will the employee do in this role?

• Lead, mentor, and develop researchers and designers, fostering a culture of collaboration, continuous learning, and user-centered thinking.

• Drive UX maturity across the organization by establishing and evolving research and design best practices, frameworks, and standards.

• Influence product strategy, business priorities, and roadmap decisions through user insights, research findings, and customer-centered recommendations.

• Partner with business, product, technology, marketing, and data leaders to ensure user experience considerations are embedded in decision-making.

• Define and execute research strategies and roadmaps that align customer needs, business goals, and product priorities.

• Lead quantitative and qualitative research initiatives from planning through delivery, including study design, execution, analysis, and stakeholder communication.

• Facilitate workshops, journey mapping sessions, and discovery activities that align teams around customer needs and business opportunities.

• Lead the development of end-to-end customer journey strategies, identifying opportunities to improve experiences across channels and touchpoints.

• Create, evaluate, and validate experience concepts and design solutions through usability testing, customer feedback, behavioral analytics, and iterative refinement.

• Establish and communicate UX success metrics, usability benchmarks, and research-driven insights that demonstrate business impact and guide continuous improvement.

What skills and qualifications does this employee need?

Education

• A Degree in related studies (Human Computer Interaction, Human Factors, Data Science, Interaction Design, Cognitive Science, Psychology, etc.), or equivalent real-world experience

Work Experience

• 5-8 years in UX related role doing research and design

• 1-2 years leading UX researchers/designers

• Experience managing qualitative and quantitative research projects including multi-phase, multi-mode projects.

• Ability to do design work in tools such as Figma (the primary one we use)

• Familiarity with current and emerging KPI’s, benchmarks and success metrics (Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction Scores, Customer Effort Score, System Usability Score, etc.)

• Experience with survey and measurement tools (Ex: Qualtrics, UserTesting.com)

• Experience turning insights in to action, with the ability to tell a compelling story about the wants and needs of our clients

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• A passion for leading and career growth

• Caring and compassion for others including a commitment to psychological safety

• Must be comfortable communicating with and influencing leaders at all levels

• Promoting UX maturity and advocate for the value it provides the organization

• Knowledge of UX Trends

• Genuine passion for problem-solving, are comfortable with ambiguity, and rise to challenges with creativity

• Must be comfortable working closely with passionate researchers, designers, product owners, scrum masters, technologists, marketers, and data scientists that all care deeply about driving our customer experience vision

• Takes a collaborative approach to projects, continually holding the user’s perspective while balancing a diverse range of stakeholder objectives

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (preferred)

• Financial Services experience

• Military experience

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Required Skills


Required Experience