Lead Researcher, Product Research & Insights

To get the best candidate experience, please consider applying for a maximum of 3 roles within 12 months to ensure you are not duplicating efforts.

Job Category

User Experience

Job Details

About Salesforce

Salesforce is the #1 AI CRM, where humans with agents drive customer success together. Here, ambition meets action. Tech meets trust. And innovation isn’t a buzzword — it’s a way of life. The world of work as we know it is changing and we're looking for Trailblazers who are passionate about bettering business and the world through AI, driving innovation, and keeping Salesforce's core values at the heart of it all.

Ready to level-up your career at the company leading workforce transformation in the agentic era? You’re in the right place! Agentforce is the future of AI, and you are the future of Salesforce.

The Agentforce Marketing R&I team delivers the customer and partner insights that shape our AI products. We are seeking a Lead Researcher to drive the development of AI solutions for marketers, marketing operations, and marketing leaders. 

You are a mixed-methods expert - skilled in qualitative, survey, and statistical analysis, and who distills complex problems into clear product and business strategy. You excel at balancing long-term strategic initiatives with rapid usability testing, and are eager to integrate AI tools into the end to end research workflow to accelerate impact. And importantly, you seamlessly switch between research craft, collaboration, and operational excellence. 

Responsibilities:

• AI-First Research Innovation: Lead the integration of AI tools (e.g., Claude, Gemini, NotebookLM) to accelerate the research lifecycle. You’ll be responsible for separating "AI noise" from meaningful signals, validating AI-generated outputs for accuracy, and crafting interactive prototypes, dashboards, and research workflows with AI tooling. 

• Mixed-Methods Execution: Design and execute end-to-end research - from foundational generative studies to rapid evaluative testing. You are equally comfortable with deep qualitative inquiry (e.g. unmoderated testing, interviews, moderated concept testing, etc.) and advanced survey methodologies.

• Strategic Storytelling & Influence: Beyond just reporting data, you will socialize insights across cross-functional stakeholders to directly influence product roadmaps and business decisions. You translate "the what" into a compelling "so what." 

• End-to-End Research Planning: Manage research timelines, budgets, and deliverables from front to back. Partner with our research operations team to align and support innovation in our participant recruiting and community-based efforts.

• Ethical Stewardship: Maintain the highest data integrity and ethical research standards, particularly as we navigate the complexities of AI bias, privacy, and "ethical imagination" in product development.

• Cross-Functional Orchestration: Act as a catalyst between UX, Product Management, Engineering, and Go To Market. You’ll own the "invisible orchestration" required to move an idea from a research insight to a global product launch.

Required Experience / Skills:

• 7+ years of hands-on experience in UX, product design, or technology research, with at least 2 years in a large, matrixed organization.

• AI Fluency: A working grasp of how AI systems fail and learn. You know when to deploy AI for efficiency and when the "human in the loop" is non-negotiable.

• Methodological Rigor: Mastery of qualitative and quantitative techniques, including statistical analysis to ensure the reliability of findings.

• Global Collaboration: Comfortable working with and across globally dispersed teams (AMER/APAC) and navigating the nuances of different market needs.

• Educational Foundation: University degree in a field emphasizing human behavior (e.g., Psychology, Anthropology, HCI) or a research-focused business discipline.

Preferred Experience / Skills:

• SaaS Expertise: Previous experience in enterprise SaaS or technology, with a specific pulse on Marketing personas and use cases.

• Data Architecture: Comfort building research libraries, data dashboards, or automated tracking for behavioral metrics at scale.

• Workshop Facilitation: Ability to lead internal "design studios" or external stakeholder workshops to co-create solutions.

• Research Communities: Prior experience in development, management, and use of proprietary communities and panels. 

• Statistical methods and concepts: Comfort with and experience working with behavioral signals data.

Unleash Your Potential

When you join Salesforce, you’ll be limitless in all areas of your life. Our benefits and resources support you to find balance and be your best, and our AI agents accelerate your impact so you can do your best. Together, we’ll bring the power of Agentforce to organizations of all sizes and deliver amazing experiences that customers love. Apply today to not only shape the future — but to redefine what’s possible — for yourself, for AI, and the world.

Accommodations

If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please submit a request via this Accommodations Request Form.

Please note that Salesforce uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help our recruiters assess and evaluate candidates’ resumes and qualifications throughout the recruiting process. Humans will always make any candidate selection and hiring decisions. Please see our Candidate Privacy Statement for more information about how we use your personal data and your rights, including with regard to use of AI tools and opt out options.

Posting Statement

Salesforce is an equal opportunity employer and maintains a policy of non-discrimination with all employees and applicants for employment. What does that mean exactly? It means that at Salesforce, we believe in equality for all. And we believe we can lead the path to equality in part by creating a workplace that’s inclusive, and free from discrimination. Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal. Any employee or potential employee will be assessed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications – without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, transgender status, age, disability, veteran or marital status, political viewpoint, or other classifications protected by law. This policy applies to current and prospective employees, no matter where they are in their Salesforce employment journey. It also applies to recruiting, hiring, job assignment, compensation, promotion, benefits, training, assessment of job performance, discipline, termination, and everything in between. Recruiting, hiring, and promotion decisions at Salesforce are fair and based on merit. The same goes for compensation, benefits, promotions, transfers, reduction in workforce, recall, training, and education.