Who are we?

Sidewalk Labs is an Alphabet company tackling the challenges of urban growth. Our vision for cities is rooted in a cross-disciplinary approach that is reflected in our team, composed of experts from real estate, government, finance, technology, engineering and more. Since our founding in 2015, we have grown into an organization of over 100 employees based primarily in New York and Toronto.

We are currently designing a new kind of mixed-use, complete community on Toronto’s waterfront in partnership with the tripartite agency Waterfront Toronto and the local community. This joint effort, called Sidewalk Toronto, will combine forward-thinking urban design and new digital technology to create a people-centered neighborhood that achieves precedent-setting levels of sustainability, affordability, mobility, and economic opportunity.

We are working to achieve something unprecedented — help us build it!

What is the role?

You will be a key member of Sidewalk’s design team, carrying out user-centered design research across the organization. Our growing product and design team is on a mission to deliver intuitive, seamless experiences for city residents, operators, workers, and visitors, and we start with users first. You will work closely with members of our UX design team and our cross-functional teams to:

• Conduct and guide studies using methods such as ethnographic/field research, diary studies, surveys, user/usability testing (remote and in-person), benchmark studies, online A/B testing, and quantitative analytics.
• Provide deep insight and actionable recommendations to improve user experience.
• Find creative and compelling ways to generate and share results and recommendations throughout the company.
• Influence product and service strategy, working closely with product managers, engineers, our corporate development team, and subject-matter experts to determine product direction.
• Support facilitation of strategic workshops with diverse audiences that deeply drive understanding of user needs, strategy, and priorities.

What we expect:

Obsessed with user needs

• You have 5+ years of experience in product organizations, leading qualitative research such as interviews, observations, surveys, and usability tests as well as blended research or quant-based methods.
• You have a degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Anthropology, Human Factors, Design, or other UX-equivalent research experience.
• You are a proven leader and communicator; you are able to educate a larger organization about the value, need, and process around user research with ease.

Bias towards action

• Once you’ve sketched out an idea, you find the fastest path to gain traction and begin executing.
• You have a strong ability to create whatever assets are needed quickly.
• Scrappy and creative: as our first UX research specialist, we’ll lean on your to determine the highest and best use for research based on your broad understanding of user needs, technological possibilities and urban knowledge.
• Experience using Usertesting.com, Qualtrics, dScout, Airtable, Typeform or comparable UXR tools.

Solve problems, together

• You have experience and comfort in structuring and negotiating internal/external partnerships to get the work done. We often engage many subject matter experts, advisors, and other stakeholders in our research process.
• You can come up with novel solutions, working well with urbanists and technologists.
• You ask hard questions and challenge assumptions to ensure that we’re solving the right problems.

Passionate about cities

• Demonstrated curiosity for the urban environment and care deeply about improving the lives of people in cities.

Bonus points

• Experience working in a design role, using design/prototyping tools a plus.
• Experience using statistics, experiment design, and data science to gain insight.

What you have to achieve:

• Within the first month, you’ve absorbed the research done thus far, both from our in-house design team, from our partners, and from our public engagement teams.
• You’ve assessed the needs for research across our multiple product teams and created a plan for how we might address these needs in the next 3-6 months. You’ve created a scope for an initial body of research that will deliver foundational insights to one of our pillar teams, such as housing or mobility.
• By the end of month three, you will have helped shape and conduct 2-3 in-flight discovery-based research streams (some of which will likely involve managing outside vendors) and fleshed out a plan for how user research stories and recommendations will influence our product roadmaps and plans for Sidewalk Toronto.
• Beyond the first few months, you’ve formed a strategy for how we better archive and share our research (with our privacy protocols top of mind) that enable those across our organization to easily access and understand key insights.

The community of the future is a place for everyone, and Sidewalk Labs is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We encourage members of underrepresented communities to apply. All employment is based on merit and business need.

We are very excited to hear from you.