Lead UX Researcher, Strategic Discovery & Human-Centered Design

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. Being part of the team means you will play a critical role in shaping Target’s digital experience through insight, creativity, and human-centered thinking. 

About the role 

As a Lead UX Researcher, Strategic Discovery & Human-Centered Design, you will help shape some of Target’s most important future opportunities by bringing a deeply human-centered and strategic approach to discovery. You will work before solutions are fully defined, helping leaders and teams understand where Target should invest, what problems are worth solving, and how emerging opportunities connect to real human needs. 

This role focuses on helping teams move from ambiguity to alignment and from assumptions to evidence. Through research, experimentation, and discovery, you will uncover opportunities, reduce uncertainty, and help teams make better decisions. You will facilitate workshops, guide strategic conversations, and translate complex insights into clear opportunity areas, experience principles, and recommendations. 

Success in this role requires strong partnership across UX, product, technology, business, strategy, and other insight teams. By connecting human understanding with business context and multiple sources of evidence, you will help create a more complete view of opportunities, risks, and future possibilities. 

As new technologies and AI-enabled experiences emerge, you will help teams explore opportunities and evaluate concepts through a human-centered lens. You will apply new tools and methods thoughtfully while maintaining the judgment, ethics, and rigor that drive high-quality research. 

As a member of the team, you will help strengthen Target’s culture of human-centered discovery. Beyond individual projects, you will mentor others, contribute to evolving research practices, and help teams build confidence in making decisions earlier in the product and experience development process. 

Responsibilities 

• Lead strategic discovery efforts that help teams understand complex problems, identify opportunities, and make informed decisions. 

• Design and conduct research that reduces uncertainty and informs product, business, and experience strategy. 

• Facilitate workshops and working sessions that bring diverse perspectives together, create alignment, and help teams move from insight to action. 

• Translate research findings into compelling stories, opportunity areas, and recommendations that influence future direction. 

• Partner with quantitative researchers and other insight teams to connect human understanding with behavioral, operational, and business signals. 

• Use experimentation and rapid learning approaches to help teams test assumptions and explore future possibilities. 

• Apply AI-enabled research and discovery tools thoughtfully while maintaining research quality, ethical practice, and human judgment. 

• Contribute to the growth of Target’s research practice through mentorship, influence, and the development of reusable methods and frameworks. 

• Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs. 

About You 

• 7+ years of experience in UX research, design research, human-centered design, service design, experience strategy, or a related field. 

• Experience leading discovery work that helps teams understand complex problems, uncover new opportunities, and make informed decisions. 

• Exceptional communication, facilitation, and storytelling skills, with the ability to build alignment, influence decisions, and translate research into action. 

• Comfortable bringing together diverse perspectives and helping teams move forward when the path ahead is unclear. 

• Ability to connect human needs, business priorities, and multiple sources of evidence to create a holistic view of opportunities and risks. 

• Strong judgment and a thoughtful approach to experimentation, emerging technologies, and AI-enabled research practices. 

• Experience mentoring others and contributing to the growth of research and human-centered design practices. 

• Curious, adaptable, and energized by solving meaningful problems that do not yet have obvious answers. 

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.