Lead UX Product Researcher - Emerging Experiences

About Us 

Working at Target means helping all families discover the joy of everyday life. We bring that vision to life through our values and culture. Learn more about Target here. 

Target UX is a group of design, content, research, and accessibility practitioners and experts, with a passion for improving and innovating our digital experiences for Target’s guests, team members, and partners. Here, we pride ourselves on designing tangible, inspiring, and impactful solutions that serve all aspects of our business, and being a part of the team means you will play a critical role for Target’s digital experience by increasing ease, simplicity, value, and delight for every touchpoint. 

About the team 

The Emerging Experiences team focuses on future-forward guest experiences that are seamless, inspiring, and full of possibility. We imagine what’s next for Target’s digital and physical touchpoints and bring those ideas to life through immersive, high-fidelity storytelling. 

This team works across the ecosystem, collaborating with product, engineering, brand, stores, and enterprise strategy to prototype the future and make it real. We're here to create clarity in complexity. At Target, design isn’t just how something works, it’s how it feels. It’s how we bring joy to everyday life through moments of clarity, emotion, and care. 

About the role 

As a Lead Product Researcher embedded within our Emerging Experiences team, you will help shape the future of Target’s guest experience by leading research that informs long-term vision, concept incubation, and emerging product opportunities across digital and physical touchpoints. You will drive understanding of evolving guest needs, behaviors, expectations, and emerging technologies, helping teams identify opportunities that may not yet have clear product definitions. Working across multiple initiatives and strategic horizons, you will guide research efforts that evaluate future-state concepts, immersive experiences, AI-enabled interactions, and new service models that have the potential to transform how guests engage with Target. 

As a Lead Product Researcher, you will serve as a research leader throughout the concept and product development lifecycle, shaping research strategy, recommending methodologies, facilitating synthesis, and activating insights that influence decision-making across teams. You will help define how Target evaluates emerging experiences by establishing success criteria, identifying risks and opportunities, and translating ambiguity into actionable direction. Through your work, you will connect guest needs with business objectives, helping teams make informed decisions about where to invest, explore, and innovate. 

Beyond individual initiatives, you will serve as a catalyst for human-centered thinking across product, design, engineering, and business teams. You will elevate the practice of research through mentorship, thought leadership, and influence, helping teams deepen their understanding of guest needs and translate insights into meaningful experiences. As a member of the Guest UX Research Team, you will contribute to advancing the broader UX practice at Target through leadership, collaboration, and craft. 

Responsibilities  

• Use your skills, experience, and talents to contribute to groundbreaking thinking and visionary goals. 

• Lead research strategy and execution across future-focused initiatives, concept incubation efforts, and emerging experience explorations. 

• Serve as a research leader throughout the research lifecycle by recommending methodologies, defining scope, coordinating execution, facilitating research activities, and leading synthesis and analysis. 

• Lead qualitative and quantitative research efforts, including moderated and unmoderated testing, concept evaluation, ethnographic research, shop-alongs, longitudinal studies, intercepts, journey mapping, and exploratory generative research. 

• Define and evaluate quality for emerging experiences, including adaptive, AI-enabled, and highly personalized interactions. 

• Lead synthesis of research findings and activate insights through compelling storytelling, opportunity identification, and strategic recommendations. 

• Use your influence to identify and pursue user-centered outcomes within and across products, initiatives, and teams. 

• Effectively facilitate multiple cross-functional working teams and collaborate across product, design, engineering, brand, and business partners. 

• Guide research process and mentor researchers and cross-functional partners. 

• Advance a culture of experimentation and human-centered practice within UX, product, and engineering teams. 

• Build relationships across Target to identify emerging opportunities and enable future-state innovation. 

• Contribute to the evolution of research practices, frameworks, and thought leadership across the Guest UX Research organization. 

About You 

• 7+ years of experience practicing UX research for digital products, services, or emerging technology experiences. 

• Preferred 4-year degree in Design Research, Social Science, Psychology, Human Factors, HCI, Anthropology, or related field. 

• Demonstrated expertise in qualitative and quantitative research methods, including remote moderated and unmoderated testing, contextual inquiry, ethnographic research, surveys, concept testing, and emerging AI-supported research approaches. 

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; demonstrated ability to effectively communicate complex concepts to cross-functional partners and influence decision-making. 

• A strong ability to tell compelling stories from data and translate ambiguity into actionable insights and recommendations. 

• Comfortable operating in highly ambiguous environments where concepts, prototypes, and priorities evolve rapidly. 

• Strong project leadership skills with experience managing multiple initiatives across varying stages of discovery and development. 

• Advanced strategic problem-solving, systems thinking, and collaboration skills. 

• Experience working effectively with early-stage concepts, prototypes, future-state visions, and innovation-focused teams. 

• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority and build alignment across diverse stakeholder groups. 

• Experience mentoring researchers and helping elevate research capabilities across teams. 

• Proficient in research tools for remote testing, surveys, analysis, synthesis, and reporting (UserTesting, Qualtrics, Dscout, ChatGPT, etc.). 

• You balance near-term learning needs with long-term strategic vision. 

• You are an advocate for human-centered design and can clearly communicate how research drives business outcomes, product strategy, and guest value. 

• Exhibit a growth mindset, intellectual curiosity, and passion for understanding people and experiences. 

This position will operate as a Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement based on Target’s needs. A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member’s core role will need to be performed both onsite at the Target HQ MN location the role is assigned to and virtually, depending upon what your role, team and tasks require for that day. Work duties cannot be performed outside of the country of the primary work location, unless otherwise prescribed by Target. Click here if you are curious to learn more about Minnesota.