UX Research Lead

📍 Job Overview

Job Title: UX Research Lead

Company: Schibsted

Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Job Type: FULL_TIME

Category: UX Research / Product Strategy

Date Posted: March 26, 2026

Experience Level: 5-10 Years

Remote Status: Hybrid

🚀 Role Summary

• Lead proactive, strategic user research initiatives to significantly influence product direction and inform business strategy, moving beyond tactical design validation to identify core user needs and opportunities.

• Establish and champion a continuous learning system that deeply understands user behavior, identifies friction points, unmet needs, and growth opportunities across the entire user lifecycle.

• Act as a strategic partner to Product, Design, and Data leadership, embedding research findings directly into decision-making processes and ensuring product development is grounded in validated behavioral hypotheses.

• Elevate the impact and quality of user insights by synthesizing qualitative research, behavioral data, and AI-assisted methods, ensuring clarity, prioritization, and direct connection to desired business outcomes.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role is positioned as a strategic leader within the UX research function, emphasizing influence on product direction and business strategy rather than traditional usability testing. The focus is on proactive, insight-driven decision-making and building a robust research culture.

📈 Primary Responsibilities

• Define and Drive Strategic Research Agenda: Proactively identify and prioritize key knowledge gaps that align with Podme's overarching strategic direction, translating complex user behaviors into clear problem framing and actionable opportunity spaces.

• Build a Continuous Learning System: Establish and maintain ongoing research practices to ensure a constant understanding of user drop-off points, habit formation/breaking factors, discovery influences on engagement, and the key differentiators between retained and churned users.

• Embed Research into Product Development: Integrate research seamlessly into product leadership's planning cycles, ensuring that every major initiative begins with a validated behavioral hypothesis and that assumptions are validated early and often.

• Synthesize and Elevate Insights: Combine qualitative research methodologies with behavioral data and AI-assisted synthesis techniques to generate deep, actionable insights that are clear, prioritized, and directly linked to desired business outcomes.

• Develop Research Capability and Culture: Evolve and standardize research practices, frameworks, and methodologies, while also coaching designers, Product Managers, and other teams in user-centric decision-making and research thinking.

• Represent User Needs at Leadership Level: Act as the primary advocate for user needs and insights in strategic discussions, ensuring that all trade-offs are evaluated against long-term user value and retention goals, serving as a key partner to Product, Design, and Data leadership.

📝 Enhancement Note: The responsibilities are heavily weighted towards strategic impact and building foundational research capabilities, indicating a need for a candidate who can not only conduct research but also influence organizational strategy and foster a user-centric mindset across teams.

🎓 Skills & Qualifications

Education: While no specific degree is mandated, a Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field such as Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, or a related discipline is highly beneficial for understanding and applying research methodologies.

Experience: Minimum of 5-10 years of progressive experience in user research, with a significant portion focused on strategic and exploratory research, influencing product direction, and driving business outcomes.

Required Skills:

• Deep User Research Expertise: Proven proficiency in a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, including in-depth interviews, ethnographic studies, surveys, usability testing, and diary studies, with a strong emphasis on strategic and exploratory approaches.

• Strategic Influence: Demonstrated ability to translate complex user insights into clear, actionable recommendations that have directly influenced product strategy and roadmap decisions, moving beyond tactical usability improvements.

• Problem Framing & Opportunity Identification: Skill in identifying critical user problems and unmet needs before solutions are conceived, and translating behavioral patterns into compelling business opportunities.

• Continuous Learning System Design: Experience in establishing and managing ongoing research processes that provide a consistent flow of user understanding and feedback.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Ability to work effectively and build strong partnerships with Product Management, Design, Data Analytics, Engineering, and Leadership teams, acting as a strategic partner.

• Insight Synthesis & Communication: Expertise in combining qualitative data, behavioral analytics, and AI-assisted tools to generate deep insights and communicate them clearly and persuasively to diverse stakeholders.

• Swedish & Norwegian Fluency: Professional fluency in Swedish and a good understanding of Norwegian are essential for effective collaboration and user insight gathering across Podme’s core markets.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience within subscription-based business models or retention-driven industries.

• Familiarity with AI-assisted research tools and data synthesis techniques.

• Background in media, content platforms, or recommendation systems.

• Experience in scaling research functions or practices in multi-market environments.

• Knowledge of quantitative data analysis and its integration with qualitative findings.

📝 Enhancement Note: The emphasis on strategic impact, cross-functional leadership, and bilingual proficiency (Swedish/Norwegian) are critical qualifications. The "5-10 years" experience level suggests a senior individual contributor or lead role with significant autonomy.

📊 Process & Systems Portfolio Requirements

Portfolio Essentials:

• Strategic Research Case Studies: Showcase at least 2-3 in-depth case studies demonstrating how your strategic research initiatives directly informed and shaped product roadmaps or business strategies, highlighting the problem, your approach, key insights, and the resulting impact.

• Insight-Driven Decision Making Examples: Provide specific examples of how you translated complex user behavior into clear, prioritized insights that led to significant product pivots or the identification of new growth opportunities.

• Continuous Learning System Design: Outline your approach to building or contributing to a continuous research system, detailing how you would establish ongoing feedback loops and knowledge sharing mechanisms.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration Evidence: Include examples of how you have partnered with Product, Design, and Data teams, illustrating your role as a decision partner rather than a service provider.

Process Documentation:

• Research Agenda Development: Demonstrate your ability to create and articulate a strategic research agenda, including prioritization frameworks and alignment with business objectives.

• Insight Synthesis & Dissemination: Provide examples of how you synthesize diverse data sources (qualitative, quantitative, AI-assisted) into cohesive insights and how you ensure these insights are effectively communicated and utilized across an organization.

• Methodology Evolution: Showcase your experience in developing, refining, or scaling research practices, frameworks, and standards to improve research quality and impact.

📝 Enhancement Note: A portfolio should strongly emphasize strategic impact, leadership potential, and the ability to integrate research into core business and product strategy, rather than just documenting research projects. The ability to demonstrate how research drove business outcomes is paramount.

💵 Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: Based on industry benchmarks for experienced UX Research Leads in Stockholm, Sweden, with 5-10 years of experience, a competitive salary range is estimated to be between 60,000 - 85,000 SEK per month (approximately 720,000 - 1,020,000 SEK annually). This range can vary based on the candidate's specific experience, qualifications, and negotiation.

Benefits:

• Comprehensive Health & Wellness: Including health insurance, potential wellness stipends, and access to mental health resources.

• Generous Paid Time Off: Ample vacation days, public holidays, and potential for additional paid leave.

• Professional Development Support: Budget for conferences, training, workshops, and continuous learning opportunities relevant to UX research and leadership.

• Retirement Savings Plan: Contributions to a pension scheme in line with Swedish employment standards.

• Hybrid Work Flexibility: Opportunities to balance remote and in-office work, fostering work-life integration.

• Employee Stock Options/Bonuses: Potential for performance-based bonuses or equity, reflecting the company's growth and success.

• Subsidized Public Transport/Parking: Assistance with commuting costs to the Stockholm office.

Working Hours: Standard full-time hours are typically around 40 hours per week, with flexibility offered to accommodate hybrid work arrangements and personal needs, while ensuring consistent contribution to team goals and research initiatives.

📝 Enhancement Note: Salary estimation is based on publicly available data for UX Research Lead roles in Stockholm, considering the experience level and the company's backing by Schibsted. Benefits are typical for a tech company of this size and region.

🎯 Team & Company Context

🏢 Company Culture

Industry: Digital Media, Subscription Services (Podcasts & Audiobooks)

Company Size: 80+ Employees (Podme), part of Schibsted Media (a large media group). This size indicates a dynamic, fast-paced environment with opportunities for significant individual impact, while also benefiting from the resources and stability of a larger parent company.

Founded: Podme was founded in [Founding year not explicitly stated, but part of Schibsted since 2021]. Being part of Schibsted Media since 2021 provides a strong foundation and clear strategic backing.

Team Structure:

• The UX Research Lead will report to the UX Manager at Podme, indicating a structured UX team with clear leadership.

• This role requires close collaboration with Product Managers, Designers, Data Analysts, and Leadership within Podme, emphasizing a cross-functional, integrated approach to product development.

Methodology:

• Data-Driven Product Development: The company emphasizes strengthening "data-driven excellence," indicating a strong reliance on both quantitative and qualitative data for decision-making.

• User-Centric Approach: The vision to "enrich people’s lives through stories" and create "effortless and habit-forming audio and product experiences" highlights a core user-centric philosophy.

• Continuous Improvement: The focus on a "continuous learning system" and "research-led product development" points to an agile and iterative approach to product evolution.

Company Website: https://schibstedmedia.com/our-brands/podme/, https://schibstedmedia.com/

📝 Enhancement Note: The company culture appears to be a blend of a fast-paced startup environment within Podme, supported by the established structure and resources of a large media conglomerate (Schibsted). The emphasis is on data-driven, user-centric innovation in the digital media space.

📈 Career & Growth Analysis

Operations Career Level: This role is a senior individual contributor or lead position focused on UX Research. It signifies a transition from executing research to strategically shaping research direction and influencing broader product and business strategy. The "Lead" title implies mentorship and potential for future team leadership.

Reporting Structure: The UX Research Lead reports to the UX Manager at Podme. This structure provides a direct reporting line for guidance, feedback, and career development within the UX discipline. Collaboration with Product, Design, and Data leadership is critical for strategic alignment and impact.

Operations Impact: The core impact of this role is to ensure that Podme's product development is deeply informed by user understanding, leading to more effective product decisions, increased user engagement, stronger habit formation, and ultimately, improved retention and business growth for a subscription-based service. The role directly influences the strategic roadmap and the company's ability to identify and capitalize on user needs and market opportunities.

Growth Opportunities:

• Strategic Leadership Expansion: Opportunity to grow into a more senior leadership role, potentially managing a team of researchers as the function scales within Podme or Schibsted.

• Domain Expertise Development: Deepen expertise in subscription models, media platforms, and retention-driven businesses, becoming a recognized authority in these areas.

• Cross-Functional Influence: Expand influence across different business units within Schibsted, leveraging research insights to drive broader organizational change.

• Methodology Innovation: Lead the development and implementation of cutting-edge research techniques, including AI-assisted synthesis and advanced behavioral data analysis.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role offers significant scope for strategic impact and personal growth, moving beyond tactical research to shaping company direction. The "Lead" title clearly indicates a path toward greater responsibility and potential leadership within the UX and product development ecosystem.

🌐 Work Environment

Office Type: The role is based in Stockholm, Sweden, at Kungsbron 13. While specific office details aren't provided, Schibsted, as a large media group, likely offers modern, well-equipped office spaces designed to foster collaboration and productivity.

Office Location(s): The primary office is located at Kungsbron 13, Stockholm, Sweden. This central location in Stockholm likely offers excellent accessibility via public transportation, a key consideration for hybrid work arrangements.

Workspace Context:

• Collaborative Hub: The office environment is expected to facilitate close collaboration with Product, Design, and Data teams, encouraging spontaneous discussions and co-creation.

• Technology-Rich: Access to necessary tools, software, and potentially specialized research equipment to conduct comprehensive user studies.

• User-Centric Atmosphere: The company's vision and focus on user experience suggest an environment where user insights are valued and actively sought, fostering a culture of empathy and continuous learning.

Work Schedule: The role supports a hybrid work arrangement, allowing for a balance between focused, individual work (potentially remote) and collaborative, in-office sessions. This flexibility is designed to optimize productivity and work-life integration, essential for sustained high performance in complex research roles.

📝 Enhancement Note: The hybrid nature of the role, combined with a central Stockholm location, suggests a modern work environment that prioritizes both collaboration and individual focus, supported by the infrastructure of a large media company.

📄 Application & Portfolio Review Process

Interview Process:

• Initial Screening: A conversation with a recruiter or hiring manager to assess overall fit, experience, and understanding of the role's strategic nature. Be prepared to articulate your approach to strategic research and stakeholder influence.

• Hiring Manager Interview: A deeper dive with the UX Manager to discuss your research philosophy, leadership style, experience in driving product strategy, and how you would approach building a continuous learning system.

• Team & Stakeholder Interviews: Meetings with Product, Design, and Data leaders to evaluate your cross-functional collaboration skills, ability to translate insights into actionable product decisions, and cultural fit. Prepare specific examples of how you've partnered effectively.

• Portfolio Presentation & Case Study: A session where you will present a selection of your strategic research work, focusing on how your insights influenced product direction and business outcomes. This is a critical step to demonstrate your impact.

• Final Interview (Potentially with Senior Leadership): A concluding discussion to confirm alignment on strategic vision and leadership potential.

Portfolio Review Tips:

• Focus on Impact: Prioritize case studies that clearly demonstrate how your research directly influenced product strategy, roadmap decisions, or significant business metrics (e.g., retention, engagement, conversion). Quantify impact where possible.

• Strategic Narrative: Structure your portfolio presentations to tell a compelling story: the business challenge, your strategic research approach, the key insights uncovered, the resulting product or strategic recommendations, and the measured outcomes.

• Showcase Problem Framing: Highlight instances where you identified significant user problems or opportunities before solutions were proposed.

• Demonstrate Cross-Functional Partnership: Illustrate how you collaborated with Product, Design, and Data to ensure insights were understood, embraced, and acted upon.

• Highlight Continuous Learning: If possible, showcase examples of how you've contributed to or built ongoing research processes.

Challenge Preparation:

• Strategic Problem-Solving: Be ready to discuss how you would approach a hypothetical strategic research challenge for Podme, focusing on identifying key questions, methodologies, and potential insights.

• Stakeholder Management: Prepare to discuss how you handle disagreements or pushback on research findings and how you ensure insights lead to action.

• Synthesis and Communication: Practice articulating complex research findings concisely and persuasively, tailored for different audiences (e.g., leadership vs. product teams).

📝 Enhancement Note: The interview process emphasizes strategic thinking, leadership influence, and the ability to translate research into tangible business impact. A strong portfolio showcasing these aspects is crucial for success.

🛠 Tools & Technology Stack

Primary Tools:

• Qualitative Research Platforms: Tools for conducting and analyzing interviews, usability tests, and surveys (e.g., UserTesting.com, Lookback, Maze, Dovetail for synthesis).

• Synthesis & Analysis Tools: Software for organizing, synthesizing, and visualizing qualitative data (e.g., Miro, Mural, Dovetail, EnjoyHQ).

• Collaboration Suites: Tools for team communication and project management (e.g., Slack, Microsoft Teams, Asana, Jira).

Analytics & Reporting:

• Web/App Analytics: Experience with platforms like Google Analytics, Amplitude, Mixpanel, or similar tools to understand user behavior and complement qualitative findings.

• Data Visualization Tools: Familiarity with tools like Tableau, Power BI, or Looker for understanding and presenting behavioral data trends.

CRM & Automation:

• While not a direct CRM role, understanding how user data flows from CRM or marketing automation platforms into research insights can be beneficial. Familiarity with how customer data is tracked and utilized within a product context is key.

• AI-Assisted Synthesis Tools: Experience with emerging tools that leverage AI for research analysis and insight generation is a plus.

📝 Enhancement Note: Proficiency in tools that support qualitative research, synthesis, and collaboration is essential. Experience integrating qualitative insights with quantitative behavioral data from analytics platforms is highly valued.

👥 Team Culture & Values

Operations Values:

• User-Centricity: A deep-seated commitment to understanding and prioritizing user needs in all product and business decisions.

• Data-Driven Decision Making: Valuing evidence-based approaches, combining qualitative insights with quantitative data to drive strategic choices.

• Continuous Learning & Curiosity: An environment that encourages ongoing learning, exploration, and a constant seeking of new knowledge about users and the market.

• Impact Over Output: Focusing on the tangible results and business value generated by research and product efforts, rather than just the volume of work produced.

• Collaboration & Partnership: Strong emphasis on working together across disciplines, fostering open communication and mutual respect.

Collaboration Style:

• Integrated Partnership: Research is viewed as an integral part of the product development lifecycle, working hand-in-hand with Product, Design, and Data teams from ideation to execution.

• Proactive & Consultative: The UX Research Lead is expected to proactively identify research needs and opportunities, acting as a consultative partner to guide strategic thinking.

• Knowledge Sharing: A culture that promotes sharing research findings, methodologies, and learnings broadly to elevate user understanding across the organization.

📝 Enhancement Note: The company culture emphasizes a strong user focus, data-informed decision-making, and collaborative, impact-driven work. The UX Research Lead is expected to embody these values and foster them within their sphere of influence.

⚡ Challenges & Growth Opportunities

Challenges:

• Shaping a New Function: Establishing and scaling a strategic UX research function within a growing product organization, requiring clear articulation of value and methodology.

• Balancing Strategic vs. Tactical: Ensuring a focus on proactive, strategic research while managing potential demands for more immediate, tactical validation.

• Driving Organizational Change: Influencing stakeholders and embedding a deep user-centric mindset across different departments, potentially requiring overcoming existing biases or established processes.

• Synthesizing Diverse Data: Effectively combining qualitative findings with complex behavioral data and AI outputs to create cohesive, actionable insights.

• Multi-Market Nuances: Understanding and researching user behaviors across different markets (Sweden, Norway, Finland) with their unique cultural and linguistic considerations.

Learning & Development Opportunities:

• Strategic Research Leadership: Developing skills in high-level strategic planning, roadmap influence, and executive communication.

• AI in Research: Gaining hands-on experience with AI-assisted tools for synthesis, analysis, and insight generation.

• Subscription & Retention Dynamics: Deepening expertise in the specific challenges and opportunities within subscription-based media businesses.

• Cross-Functional Expertise: Broadening understanding of product management, data analytics, and engineering processes to enhance collaborative effectiveness.

• Mentorship: Potential to mentor junior researchers or designers in user research practices and strategic thinking.

📝 Enhancement Note: This role presents opportunities to tackle significant strategic challenges while offering ample room for professional growth in advanced research methodologies, leadership, and domain expertise within the digital media subscription space.

💡 Interview Preparation

Strategy Questions:

• "How would you approach defining a strategic research agenda for Podme for the next 12-18 months, given our focus on subscription growth and retention?"

• "Describe a time you identified a significant user problem or opportunity that was not initially on the product roadmap. How did you validate it and influence the team to pursue it?"

• "Imagine our user engagement metrics have plateaued. What initial research steps would you take to diagnose the underlying issues?"

Company & Culture Questions:

• "What attracts you to Podme and Schibsted, and how do you see your role contributing to our vision of enriching lives through stories?"

• "How would you foster a more user-centric culture within a team that may be heavily focused on engineering or data metrics?"

• "Describe your ideal collaboration model with Product Managers and Designers."

Portfolio Presentation Strategy:

• Structure for Impact: Begin with the business context/challenge, clearly state your research objectives, detail your strategic approach (why specific methods?), present key, non-obvious insights, outline the resulting recommendations/product decisions, and quantify the impact achieved.

• Focus on Influence: Emphasize your role in shaping decisions and influencing stakeholders, not just in conducting research.

• Show, Don't Just Tell: Use visuals, user quotes, and data points to bring your case studies to life.

• Be Prepared for Deep Dives: Anticipate questions about your methodology choices, challenges encountered, alternative approaches, and the specific outcomes of your research.

• Tailor to Podme: Connect your experience and examples to Podme's business (subscription, audiobooks, podcasts, multi-market).

📝 Enhancement Note: Preparation should focus on articulating strategic thinking, demonstrating influence, and showcasing a data-informed, user-centric approach to product development. Be ready to discuss how your research directly impacts business goals.

📌 Application Steps

To apply for this UX Research Lead position:

• Submit your application through the provided link on the Schibsted Teamtailor platform.

• Curate Your Portfolio: Select 2-3 of your most impactful strategic research projects. Ensure each case study clearly outlines the business problem, your research approach, the key insights, the product/strategic recommendations, and any measurable outcomes. Emphasize your role in influencing product direction.

• Tailor Your Resume: Highlight experience in strategic and exploratory research, stakeholder influence, cross-functional collaboration, and any relevant domain experience (e.g., subscription, media). Use keywords from the job description such as "strategic research," "user insight," "product direction," and "continuous learning."

• Prepare Your Narrative: Practice articulating your research philosophy, your approach to building continuous learning systems, and how you drive impact. Be ready to discuss your experience with Swedish and Norwegian markets if applicable.

• Research Podme and Schibsted: Familiarize yourself with Podme's offerings, target audience, and competitive landscape. Understand Schibsted Media's broader mission and values, and how Podme fits into their portfolio.

⚠️ Important Notice: This enhanced job description includes AI-generated insights and operations industry-standard assumptions. All details should be verified directly with the hiring organization before making application decisions.

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