UX Researcher (Mixed Methods)

About Tailscale Tailscale is making safe connection effortless by delivering software that makes it easy to securely interconnect people and their devices, no matter where they are. From hobbyists to multinational corporations, teams of every size use Tailscale each day to protect their networks, share access to internal tools, and more. We're building a future for the Internet that's easy, sensible, and safe, like it used to be. Founded in 2019 and fully distributed, we're backed by Accel, CRV, Insight, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital. About the Role This role is a hybrid of UX research and research operations: you'll conduct research, primarily usability and quality-validation testing, and you'll maintain the social and technical systems that make research at Tailscale repeatable and scalable. You'll report to the design manager and work closely with the current UX researcher, who will remain the team's strategic research lead. Day to day, you'll also work with product designers, product managers, and engineers across the organization. Initially, you will be focused on handling a backlog of studies, with a heavy focus on one large ongoing project. Over time, you will grow towards owning the research direction for one or more product areas with increasing autonomy. You'll have significant autonomy on what to prioritize, with support and partnership from the staff researcher and design leadership. Initially your work will be more reactive, and dependent on teams that are currently shifting their planning and delivery rhythms, and reorganizing and re-scoping work. You will have more autonomy with operations work, which runs on a longer rhythm and has several initiatives where you can drive impact on your own. Both require flexibility as the organization evolves. Key Responsibilities Research Run and scale usability research. Your core research responsibility is usability and quality-validation testing. You will evaluate shipped features, validate design assumptions, and