Virginia Tech
User Experience Researcher
🇺🇸 Hybrid - Blacksburg, VA
🕑 Full-Time
💰 $70K - $85K
💻 Product Development
🗓️ October 7th, 2025
Canvas
Edtech.com's Summary
Virginia Tech is hiring a User Experience Researcher for its Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies (TLOS) team. The role involves leading user research initiatives, translating findings into actionable recommendations, and applying service design principles to improve digital learning environments and services that support faculty success and enhance student learning outcomes.
Highlights
- Lead user research from design to delivery, including participant recruitment, data collection, analysis, and synthesis.
- Create UX artifacts such as personas and journey maps to represent stakeholder experiences.
- Partner with teams and instructional faculty to design and implement evaluations of services, technology pilots, and programs.
- Communicate research findings clearly through reports, presentations, and visual materials.
- Apply service design principles to develop and improve services, facilitating workshops and consultations.
- Required skills include qualitative and mixed-methods research, stakeholder engagement, and data visualization.
- Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field and demonstrated experience in user research and communication.
- Preferred qualifications include a master’s degree, experience in higher education or edtech contexts, familiarity with Canvas and other academic technologies, and professional certification in UX research or service design.
- Salary range of $70,000 - $85,000 with a 40-hour workweek.
- Criminal conviction check required; exempt status from overtime applies.
User Experience Researcher Full Description
Job Description
The User Experience (UX) Researcher within Technology-enhanced Learning and Online Strategies (TLOS) works in the domains of user research, evaluation, and service design. This role seeks evidence-based insights that help shape Virginia Tech’s digital learning environment to best support instructors’ success and improve learning outcomes for Virginia Tech students. The UX Researcher achieves these goals by translating findings from user research into data-based insights and actionable recommendations across TLOS’s four mission-focused areas: instructional tools and environments, faculty digital fluency, accessible technologies and universal design for learning (UDL), and course and program design. Complementing their focus on research, the UX Researcher helps gauge impact by assisting with the design and data collection for evaluations of teaching and learning technologies, services, and programs. This role also facilitates design of new services and improvement of existing services to advance teaching and learning using service design principles and methods.
As a member of the Digital Learning Innovation group, the UX Researcher strives for a balanced, holistic view informed by a deep understanding of faculty, student, and employee needs combined with knowledge of institutional priorities, organizational capabilities, emerging tools and technologies, and Virginia Tech’s digital learning ecosystem. Synthesizing these multiple dimensions into evidence-based insights, the UX Researcher develops practical recommendations that guide strategic decision-making.
Core Responsibilities:
- Lead user research initiatives from design through delivery—including study design, participant recruitment, data collection, analysis, and synthesis into actionable recommendations that inform decision making and improve services.
- Create and maintain user experience artifacts, such as personas and journey maps that accurately represent stakeholder perceptions and experiences with digital teaching and learning tools.
- Partner with TLOS teams and instructional faculty to design and implement evaluations for services, technology pilots, and programs, providing both evaluation guidance and hands-on assistance with data collection.
- Translate findings from user research or evaluations into clear communications through reports, presentations, and visual materials that highlight user needs and drive decision-making.
- Apply service design principles and methods to improve new and existing services, providing both facilitation, consultation, and methodology expertise.
As a member of the Digital Learning Innovation group, the UX Researcher strives for a balanced, holistic view informed by a deep understanding of faculty, student, and employee needs combined with knowledge of institutional priorities, organizational capabilities, emerging tools and technologies, and Virginia Tech’s digital learning ecosystem. Synthesizing these multiple dimensions into evidence-based insights, the UX Researcher develops practical recommendations that guide strategic decision-making.
Core Responsibilities:
- Lead user research initiatives from design through delivery—including study design, participant recruitment, data collection, analysis, and synthesis into actionable recommendations that inform decision making and improve services.
- Create and maintain user experience artifacts, such as personas and journey maps that accurately represent stakeholder perceptions and experiences with digital teaching and learning tools.
- Partner with TLOS teams and instructional faculty to design and implement evaluations for services, technology pilots, and programs, providing both evaluation guidance and hands-on assistance with data collection.
- Translate findings from user research or evaluations into clear communications through reports, presentations, and visual materials that highlight user needs and drive decision-making.
- Apply service design principles and methods to improve new and existing services, providing both facilitation, consultation, and methodology expertise.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in a discipline that draws on qualitative research methods, data analysis, technical communication, user experience research, or related analytics and research skills, plus working experience applying some of these skills.
- Demonstrated success designing, recruiting for, and conducting user research to answer a research question or inform a decision.
- Substantial experience carrying out qualitative research interviews, focus groups, surveys, and other qualitative research methods.
- Experience with quantitative or mixed-methods research and analysis.
- Demonstrated experience communicating user research findings and recommendations to stakeholders.
- Experience creating visualizations of user processes, workflows, or journey steps.
- Demonstrated success in effective stakeholder engagement, including facilitating team and/or user group sessions to brainstorm, ideate, or explore solutions.
- Demonstrated success designing, recruiting for, and conducting user research to answer a research question or inform a decision.
- Substantial experience carrying out qualitative research interviews, focus groups, surveys, and other qualitative research methods.
- Experience with quantitative or mixed-methods research and analysis.
- Demonstrated experience communicating user research findings and recommendations to stakeholders.
- Experience creating visualizations of user processes, workflows, or journey steps.
- Demonstrated success in effective stakeholder engagement, including facilitating team and/or user group sessions to brainstorm, ideate, or explore solutions.
Preferred Qualifications
- Master’s degree in a relevant field.
- Experience applying UX research or service design in higher education or educational technology contexts.
- Experience designing and conducting evaluations for services, projects, or programs.
- Strong understanding of service design principles or experience with service design methods.
- Professional training or certification in UX research, service design, or design thinking.
- Experience with learning management systems, especially Canvas, and other academic technology platforms.
- Experience applying UX research or service design in higher education or educational technology contexts.
- Experience designing and conducting evaluations for services, projects, or programs.
- Strong understanding of service design principles or experience with service design methods.
- Professional training or certification in UX research, service design, or design thinking.
- Experience with learning management systems, especially Canvas, and other academic technology platforms.
Overtime Status
Exempt: Not eligible for overtime
Appointment Type
Regular
Salary Information
$70,000 - $85,000
Hours per week
40
Review Date
November 28, 2025
Additional Information
The successful candidate will be required to have a criminal conviction check.
About Virginia Tech
Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech pushes the boundaries of knowledge by taking a hands-on, transdisciplinary approach to preparing scholars to be leaders and problem-solvers. A comprehensive land-grant institution that enhances the quality of life in Virginia and throughout the world, Virginia Tech is an inclusive community dedicated to knowledge, discovery, and creativity. The university offers more than 280 majors to a diverse enrollment of more than 36,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students in eight undergraduate colleges, a school of medicine, a veterinary medicine college, Graduate School, and Honors College. The university has a significant presence across Virginia, including Blacksburg, the greater Washington, D.C. area, the Health Sciences and Technology Campus in Roanoke, sites in Newport News and Richmond, and numerous Extension offices and research institutes. A leading global research institution, Virginia Tech conducts more than $650 million in research annually.
Virginia Tech endorses and encourages participation in professional development opportunities and university shared governance. These valuable contributions to university shared governance provide important representation and perspective, along with opportunities for unique and impactful professional development.
Virginia Tech does not discriminate against employees, students, or applicants on the basis of age, color, disability, sex (including pregnancy), gender, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, ethnicity or national origin, political affiliation, race, religion, sexual orientation, or military status, or otherwise discriminate against employees or applicants who inquire about, discuss, or disclose their compensation or the compensation of other employees or applicants, or on any other basis protected by law.
If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Judy Alford at jualford@vt.edu during regular business hours at least 10 business days prior to the event.
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