Principal User Researcher, Mixed Methods, B2B

About Ethos

Ethos is a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale. With its robust three-sided technology platform, Ethos is transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers alike. Ethos offers instant, accessible products and a seamless online process that requires no medical exams and just a few health questions; it eliminates traditional barriers, making it easier than ever for everyone to protect their families. Ethos is redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten.

About the role

We're looking for a researcher to establish and scale the user research practice at Ethos. Operating with a high degree of autonomy, you'll define the vision, frameworks, and methodologies that shape how we understand our users — and influence product strategy through the depth and quality of your work.

You'll own end-to-end research across our B2B partnerships business, going deep on insurance agent journeys across tools, quoting systems, onboarding, and agency management. By synthesizing quantitative and qualitative data with usage analytics and operational metrics, you'll surface high-impact opportunities and shape product direction at a strategic level.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Establish the research function at Ethos by defining research processes, methodologies, and research operations for a growing design and research team.
• Lead strategic research initiatives across complex user journeys and systems in the B2B space, encompassing agent tools, quoting flows, agent onboarding, and agency coaching and management functionality.
• Develop and maintain a panel of agents for both qualitative and quantitative research, including supporting data science in enriching metadata about agents and agencies to drive metrics creation.
• Deeply understand and simplify multi-step workflows, decision-making contexts, compliance constraints, and multi-user systems to uncover user needs and pain points.
• Build a deep understanding of the market segmentation of insurance agency types, and how that drives needs and product-market fit.
• Build scalable research frameworks to support continuous discovery, satisfaction measurement, longitudinal tracking, and robust feedback loops across customer and agent experiences.
• Lead mixed-method research efforts, designing and executing both qualitative and quantitative studies using advanced methodologies such as survey science, behavioral data analysis, and experiment design.
• Synthesize research findings with usage data, operational metrics, and market insights to create compelling narratives that identify clear product opportunities and drive action.
• Communicate research insights with clarity and influence, delivering high-impact narratives and visualizations tailored for technical and non-technical stakeholders, including executive leadership.
• Shape product strategy by translating user insights into actionable roadmap recommendations, influencing prioritization, and advocating for user-centered thinking across the organization.
• Mentor and scale research capabilities by guiding future researchers and designers, and contributing to building a strong, insight-driven product culture.
• Innovate with tools and technology, leveraging AI-enabled research tools or custom frameworks to accelerate learning, improve research efficiency, and maximize impact.

Qualifications and Skills:

• 7+ years of experience in user research, with a preference for experience within complex product ecosystems such as B2B SaaS, financial services, or enterprise tools, demonstrating a capacity to handle intricate user flows and business needs.