Staff Design Researcher

Staff Design Researcher

Category: Design & User Experience

Location: Mountain View, California; San Francisco, California

Job ID: 21540

Company Overview

Intuit is the global financial technology platform that powers prosperity for the people and communities we serve. With approximately 100 million customers worldwide using products such as TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to prosper. We never stop working to find new, innovative ways to make that possible.

Job Overview

Intuit is a global technology platform that helps our customers and communities overcome their most important financial challenges. We help give over 50 million consumers, small businesses, and self‑employed customers around the world the opportunity to prosper.

Accountants are the backbone of the QuickBooks ecosystem. They aren't just users; they are the expert partners who scale small businesses and ensure financial integrity globally.

We are looking for a Staff Design Researcher to lead the holistic research strategy for the Accountant Segment. In this role, you won't be siloed into a single product like Payroll or Payments. Instead, you will look across the entire QuickBooks platform to understand how accountants manage their entire firm, collaborate with clients, and grow their practices. You will be the champion for the "ProAdvisor" community, ensuring Intuit’s multi‑product strategy aligns with the professional workflows of the modern accountant.

Responsibilities

As a Staff Design Researcher for the Accountant segment, you are a strategic architect. You will operate with high autonomy to ensure that our various product teams (Tax, Books, Payroll, Capital) form a cohesive, "expert-grade" experience for the accounting professional.

• Identify high‑level, cross‑product opportunity areas, looking at the "spaces between the products" to find friction points in how accountants move data and manage client relationships.
• Partner with senior leaders across various QuickBooks business units to ensure a unified "Accountant First" mental model, helping transition from "Product Thinking" to "Ecosystem Thinking."
• Advocate with courage when product roadmaps drift away from the professional needs of the accountant, using deep customer empathy to influence executive‑level strategy.
• Lead comprehensive studies on the "Future of the Accounting Firm," analyzing how AI, automation, and advisory services are changing the profession.
• Create and maintain the master "Accountant Journey," identifying the most critical moments of truth across the entire Intuit lifecycle—from firm setup to seasonal tax filing.
• Partner with Data Science and Market Research to blend behavioral big data with thick qualitative insights, providing a 360‑degree view of accountant health and sentiment.
• Act as the "Sensei" for any team at Intuit looking to build for accountants, providing frameworks and personas that help other designers and PMs understand the professional user.
• Provide high‑level mentorship to researchers across the organization, elevating the standard for how we conduct "Expert-to-Expert" research.

Qualifications

We are looking for a systems‑thinker who can navigate the technical complexity of accounting while maintaining a relentless focus on human‑centered design.

• 7+ years of experience leading strategic user research for complex B2B ecosystems or professional service platforms.
• Proven ability to research multi‑sided marketplaces or complex software ecosystems where one user (the accountant) manages many others (their clients).
• A track record of research that shifted product direction or informed a new business model.
• Mastery of service blueprinting, longitudinal studies, and diary studies to capture the seasonality of an accountant’s life.
• Ability to speak confidently with CPAs and Firm Owners about practice management, workflow automation, and the shifting landscape of professional services.
• High fluency in using product intelligence tools to identify where professional users thrive or struggle across the suite.
• Strong storytelling and presentation skills; comfortable challenging senior leadership and presenting to executive stakeholders.
• Adept at thriving in a horizontal role requiring influence across teams without direct management.
• A deep appreciation for precision, efficiency, and the trusted advisor relationship that accountants hold with their clients.

Compensation and Benefits

Intuit provides a competitive compensation package with a strong pay‑for‑performance rewards approach. This position may be eligible for a cash bonus, equity rewards, and benefits in accordance with our applicable plans and programs. Pay offered is based on factors such as job‑related knowledge, skills, experience, and work location. To drive ongoing fair pay for employees, Intuit conducts regular comparisons across categories of ethnicity and gender. The expected base pay range for this position is omitted here for brevity.