You will proactively construct and own an AI-forward research roadmap for key product pillars at Okta, operating at the intersection of Identity, Security, and Artificial Intelligence. As a Staff-level individual contributor, you will drive both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to define user experiences for non-deterministic AI agents, automated workflows, and developer platforms. Additionally, you leverage agentic tools and AI workflows internally to scale qualitative coding, synthesis, and research operations across the organization.

In this role, you’ll get to:

• Drive AI Agent Research: Lead foundational and evaluative research on autonomous AI agents and the security thereof.
• Execute Balanced Mixed-Methods: Drive qualitative depth (contextual inquiry, cognitive walkthroughs) and quantitative rigor (large-scale surveys, behavioral telemetry, statistical modeling) to evaluate AI products.
• Pioneer AI Research Operations: Integrate AI tools, prompt engineering, and agentic research workflows into your daily practice to accelerate quality research outputs.
• Lead Cross-Discipline Collaboration: Facilitate research to drive cross-discipline clarity, executive alignment, and decision-making across complex security and admin workflows.
• Solve Complex Problems: Bring stakeholders together across multiple teams to scope problems and collaborate on research in ways that nurture a culture of curiosity and learning.
• Cultivate Empathy: Design mechanisms to build up customer empathy and deep knowledge of our partners, end users, consumers, administrators, and other identified audiences.
• Tell High-Impact Stories: Represent your research to diverse audiences across the organization by telling compelling stories that motivate others to solve complex needs with your insights.

You could be a fit if you have:

• Staff-Level Expertise: 7+ years of hands-on UX research experience in complex B2B, developer, or enterprise software environments, with a track record of driving product impact at a Senior or Staff level.
• Mixed-Methods Research Knowledge: Demonstrated equal mastery across Qualitative and Quantitative research methodologies.
• AI Tool Practitioner: Active daily practitioner of AI tools and prompt workflows to streamline research processes and execution, including but not limited to synthesis, structuring unstructured data, and scaling insight delivery.
• Domain Experience: Experience with products made for developers, administrators, or other technical audiences; experience working on security products is a strong plus.
• Strategic Problem Solving: Strong ability to plan, prioritize, organize, and solve complex problems independently while working with technical and business constraints.
• Cross-Functional Communication: History of effective communication, storytelling, and alignment across all levels of leadership and cross-functional partners (Product, Design, ML Engineering, Data Science).
• Mentorship & Leadership: Voracious learner and coach to people around you, raising the methodological and technical bar for the team.
• Education: Master’s or Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Cognitive Psychology, Computer Science, Data Science, Social Sciences, or equivalent industry experience.

Nice-to-Have  (Not required, but a plus):

• Advanced Quantitative Toolkit: SQL, R or Python, Cluster Analysis, Advanced Statistical Modeling, A/B Testing.
• AI Systems & Ops: Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) UX Evaluation, Advanced Prompt Engineering for Ops, Agentic Workflow Evaluation, Synthetic Data Validation.

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