Senior Design Researcher Jobs in Virginia (NOW HIRING)

We are looking for a Senior UX Researcher to help shape the future of how businesses find, buy, and use technology.
AWS Marketplace and Partner Services (AMPS) sits at the intersection of cloud software, enterprise procurement, and one of the world's largest partner ecosystems. We connect millions of active AWS customers with thousands of independent software vendors (ISVs), helping organizations discover, purchase, deploy, manage, and renew the technology that powers their work.

But this process is rarely simple. A single purchase can span months, and involves executives, end users, IT teams, procurement, finance, legal, security, AWS account teams, and multiple other roles, each with a different goal.
We're looking for a Senior UX Researcher to lead high impact research within this complex domain and help teams across Design, Product, and Engineering understand how decisions are made (or break down) between people, systems, and AI workflows.

You will translate these findings into clear product and roadmap recommendations, and advocate for insights activation at scale. You'll own research programs for AMPS product areas, lead studies from early problem framing through post-launch evaluation, and translate complex customer evidence into clear product and roadmap direction.
About You
This role is a good fit for a researcher with demonstrated experience independently conducting and activating on research in a complex space with multiple competing priorities, target users, and stakeholders.

You know how to identify the most important questions (and push back when research isn't needed), expertly balance speed with rigor, and confidently recommend paths forward even in the face of ambiguity. You are skilled at leading end-to-end research and want a direct hand in all aspects of the research process, from recruiting to analysis and synthesis. You excel at connecting the dots across stakeholder teams and aren't satisfied with throwing research over a wall-you drive impact and decision-making.

You look around corners and know when to conduct a study or analysis, even when no one is asking for it.
Key job responsibilities
- Define research strategy for complex, multi-persona journeys spanning discovery, evaluation, procurement, licensing, deployment, operations, and renewal.
- Design and execute research for complex buyer and partner journeys across several different personas and interaction surfaces (web, console, agent, etc.)
- Design and conduct generative and evaluative research using methods appropriate to the question and decision, including interviews, usability studies, surveys, diary studies, and other methods.
- Lead research for conversational and agentic experiences, including customer expectations for trust, transparency, delegation, control, and recovery when automation fails

- Identify consequential knowledge gaps and unmet customer needs, then work with Product, Design, Engineering, and business leaders to translate findings into product strategy and roadmap priorities.
- Bring together qualitative research, survey data, telemetry, and business context to develop a coherent view of customer behavior across the product lifecycle.
- Establish customer-centered quality measures for emerging experiences and evaluate whether shipped products meet those expectations.

- Develop reusable research methods and frameworks and socialize them across teams.
- Use AI-assisted research tools thoughtfully to accelerate analysis while matching rigor and human oversight to the stakes of each decision.
- Drive alignment and decision-making through clear insight narratives, working sessions, and presentations to senior leaders.

- Mentor designers, PMs, and other partners through reviews, critiques, and guidance.
A day in the life
On any given day, you might be running interviews to understand how partners co-sell with AWS, presenting findings on a recent usability study to senior leadership, designing an in-console survey, leading a focus group, creating new AI tools to scale research mentorship, or collaborating with PMs and UX Designers to conduct a workshop to align on roadmap priorities. You'll manage several research projects or programs at different stages of maturity (from foundational studies to ad hoc interviews to longstanding mechanisms) and use good judgement, flexibility, business acumen, and team support to prioritize work.

About the team
AMPS UX designs and researches across the entire ecosystem, from buyer discovery and procurement through seller operations and partner enablement. We emphasize mentorship and career growth, work/life balance, and inclusive team culture. We operate in a fast-paced, startup-like environment with Amazon's resources and scale.