UX Researcher (Contract)

Alpha FMC's Insurance Tech Services Division is seeking an experienced UX Researcher to join our custom software consulting practice. You will support Alpha's external client engagements. Alpha FMC is seeking a UX Researcher to lead user experience and customer experience research for the greenfield design of a new application. This is a hands-on, individual-contributor role embedded with a development team building something new, not retrofitting an existing product. The researcher will own the research strategy end to end: what questions need answers, how to get them, and how to make sure the answers change what the team builds. This is not a role for someone who runs a survey, tallies preferences, and hands off a slide of quotes. The mandate is to understand where user workflows break down, and where the gap sits between what people say they need and what their behavior shows they need, to enable building a 0-1 workflow application. Some of the most important findings in this kind of engagement come from problems users can't articulate themselves, surfaced through observation and pattern recognition rather than direct questioning. What You'll Do Design and run a mixed-methods research program: interviews, contextual observation, usability testing, and surveys, selecting the right method for each open question rather than defaulting to one format Lead discovery research for a greenfield application, working without an existing product to anchor against, which means research has to establish the baseline of current-state behavior and pain points before future-state design can begin Conduct competitive and analogous product analysis across direct competitors and adjacent industries, synthesizing findings into recommendations that inform product strategy, feature prioritization, and design direction Facilitate in-person research sessions and workshops with stakeholders and end users in New York City, including interviews, usability tests, and collaborative synthesis sessions with the product and design team Synthesize raw research data (interview transcripts, observation notes, usability findings, survey results) into structured insights: patterns across users, root causes of friction, and unmet needs, distinct from a simple compilation of what individual users said Distinguish stated preferences from observed behavior, and call out explicitly where the two diverge, since that gap is often where the highest-value design opportunities live Communicate findings to product, design, and delivery teams in a form that drives decisions, connecting each insight to a specific implication for the design rather than presenting findings as a standalone readout Partner with product managers and designers throughout the design process so research findings shape decisions while they're still being made Build and maintain research artifacts (personas, journey maps, workflow documentation, insight repositories) that the broader team can reference as the design evolves Recommend and help prioritize the research plan across the engagement, balancing depth on high-risk workflows against the need to cover breadth across the application Requirements Demonstrated experience leading UX/CX research programs from discovery through synthesis, ideally including at least one greenfield or 0-to-1 product effort Fluency across core research methods: qualitative interviewing, contextual inquiry/observation, moderated and unmoderated usability testing, and survey design Strong synthesis skills: the ability to move from raw data to structured, defensible insight, and to distinguish signal from anecdote Experience communicating research findings to non-research audiences (product managers, designers, executive stakeholders) in a way that visibly influences decisions Comfort working in ambiguity, with the judgment to define the research plan rather than execute a pre-set one Willingness and ability to travel to New York City to facilitate in-person workshops and…