Senior Qualitative Researcher, Marketing & Growth

Why we’re searching for a Senior Qualitative Researcher. At Wealthfront, we’re on a mission to build a financial system that favors people, not institutions. We will only succeed in this mission if we deeply understand the values, motivations and goals of current and future clients, enabling us to offer products and services that make their best possible futures more attainable. That’s why we’re looking for an exceptional qualitative researcher—someone committed to understanding the variety of the human experience, and developing compelling digital platforms which build confidence and trust when people are making some of the most important decisions of their lives. In the last two years, we’ve experienced exceptional growth as the business has reached key milestones. We’ve kept our company lean, focused, and profitable. As Marketing and Growth propel us to new heights, we’re building our teams to scale. We created this new research role to provide consistent, detailed insights into the rich and vivid textures of the lives of current and future clients, and the idiosyncrasies of financial decision making. We’re looking for a researcher who can inspire and guide our Creative and Experience Designers through empirical qualitative evidence and creative flair, with the aim of making Wealthfront iconic within our industry and beloved by our target audience. What do we offer you? Research is at the heart of all Wealthfront’s client-facing initiatives—our product process centers continuous learning enabled by research; it is the springboard from which every marketing campaign is launched. Researchers have the responsibility of being leaders within their areas (Marketing and Growth in this case), co-owners of the team’s strategy, roadmap and execution. We’re looking for a Senior User Researcher who craves this responsibility, who wants to use their research tool kit to achieve new levels of impact as an individual contributor and as part of the Growth and Marketing teams. As a Senior User Researcher embedded within the Marketing and Growth teams, you’ll take on client-facing projects intended to make a lasting impact on the growth trajectory of our business. You’ll lead end-to-end projects from study design to insight delivery, in collaboration with partners from product management, design, marketing, data science and engineering. To support you, we’ll surround you with peers and mentors. You’ll be a collaborative member of the Marketing and Growth Research Team, who will support you as you develop your roadmap and study designs. You’ll work directly with a skilled quantitative researcher to inform and augment your qualitative work. And, best of all, you’ll join a broader team of talented Wealthfront researchers working across all our products and services, ensuring you’ll have easy access to their accumulated knowledge and experience. Finally, you’ll be a member of both the Product and Marketing organizations, offering you a perspective on everything we create and insight into the most important decisions affecting business growth.

If you join us, you will:

• Uncover ideal client experiences that signal a way forward as we evolve our brand positioning and expand our product and service offerings.
• Evaluate prospect and client facing experiences for the most effective language and visual design elements
• Work closely with Marketing, Product Marketing, and Creative Designers to evaluate marketing materials and develop perspectives on product positioning.
• Collaborate with Lifecycle Marketing to deepen our relationship with existing clients through a better understanding of their needs at key moments in their financial lives.
• Be a strategic partner with cross-functional teammates from design, product, marketing, data science, and engineering to identify, plan, and execute research.
• Lead a mix of research types, including exploratory projects to inspire new concepts, as well as evaluative projects that refine design concepts.
• Learn about financial technology, investing, research, design, and so much more!

Relevant experience and mindset we’d like to see:

• You have a graduate degree in the social sciences or design / design research, or an MBA with qualitative research experience.
• 2-5 years of industry experience in qualitative research roles.
• You are experienced in partnering with skilled quantitative researchers, and adept at combining qualitative and quantitative evidence to persuade.
• You absolutely love working closely with design, marketing and product leads to design creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems.
• You are curious, a quick learner, and self-directed in pursuit of high quality outcomes.
• You’re able to communicate effectively and in a compelling way.
• You have deep knowledge and plenty of practical experience with qualitative research methods.
• You’re experienced in running end-to-end qualitative research projects that help define best practices, fill in the gaps in research knowledge, and drive initiatives forward.
• You can quickly design effective, appropriate research approaches within constraints.
• You have a collaborative mindset, with experience working across disciplines and with multiple stakeholders.

Bonus points:

• Qualitative research or lightweight survey skills
• A background in emotive Marketing or Product led Growth
• A desire to help develop excellence in user research, push the team into new territories, and empower the entire organization to understand their users better than ever before.
• A passion for financial technology, financial planning, and investing.

Estimated annual salary: $123,000 - 160,000 plus equity and discretionary bonus. Benefits include medical, vision, dental, 401K plan, generous time off, parental leave, wellness reimbursements, professional development, employee investing discount, and more! About Wealthfront Here at Wealthfront, our mission is to create a financial system that favors people, not institutions. We do this by leveraging technology to build powerful, low-cost, and easy-to-use financial products that help modern investors grow and manage their money. We started with the ambition to transform the investment advisory business. By automating strategies typically reserved for the wealthy, we unlocked access to high quality investment advice for a digitally-native generation that was underserved by traditional institutions. Since then, we've expanded to a full suite of products designed to help our clients turn their savings into long-term wealth, including: • A Cash Account that, through our partner banks, offers one of the highest annual percentage yields on uninvested cash in the industry, while providing instant and secure access to your money with no account fees and a full suite of checking features. • A zero-commission Stock Investing Account with 50+ handpicked collections that help DIY investors discover new companies and make smarter investing decisions. • Multiple automated investing portfolios designed to unlock tax savings through sophisticated strategies like fixed income, tax-loss harvesting, and direct indexing—which we offer at industry-leading low costs and accessible minimums. Our award-winning products have attracted over 1 million clients who trust us with more than $90 billion of their hard earned savings—and we're far from done. If you’re inspired to help us reshape the financial industry as we create our next chapter, let’s talk! For more information please visit www.wealthfront.com.We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Please review our candidate privacy notice. Disclosures: All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Tax-Loss Harvesting benefits vary depending on the client's entire tax and investment profile. Wealthfront doesn’t provide tax advice. The Cash Account is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC (“Wealthfront Brokerage”), Member of FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. We convey funds to partner banks who accept and maintain deposits, provide the variable interest rate, and provide access to FDIC pass-through insurance. Investment management and advisory services–which are not FDIC insured–are provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC (“Wealthfront Advisers”), an SEC-registered investment adviser. The checking features offered in the Wealthfront Cash Account are provided by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC. Fees and Eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features, please see the Deposit Account Agreement for details. By “award-winning products”, please refer to www.wealthfront.com/reviews for more information. Wealthfront Corporation oversees Total Client Assets and Trusted Clients through Wealthfront Advisers and Wealthfront Brokerage. Wealthfront Advisers and Wealthfront Brokerage are wholly owned subsidiaries of Wealthfront Corporation.