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Rippling is a unified platform for HR, IT, and Finance that consolidates workforce systems—payroll, expenses, benefits, computers, and third-party integrations—into a single system. The company has raised $1.4B+ from top-tier investors and is headquartered in San Francisco.
As Product Research Lead, you will shape Rippling's product direction across new products, customer segments, and AI-native ways of working. This is a lead-level individual contributor role focused on foundational HR systems and the realities of hourly and complex workforces. You will personally conduct research, develop grounded points of view, and write for product and company leaders. Working with product, design, engineering, and data partners, you will help teams choose directions and understand the evidence behind them. This is a strategic role for someone who wants to influence company direction, define emerging product opportunities, and help determine how AI will reshape business operations.
Key responsibilities include:
- Frame important questions before solutions are defined, then design research that can change decisions
- Learn how companies actually operate: the people, systems, rules, incentives, and workarounds behind customer needs
- Find and recruit hard-to-reach participants; use sourcing and screening to learn about the market
- Conduct rigorous qualitative research combined with behavioral data, market evidence, competitive context, and product knowledge
- Find patterns in messy evidence, test interpretations against exceptions, and explain what is known, uncertain, and why it matters
- Identify which jobs matter enough for customers to change behavior or adopt new products
- Write and present clear judgments with concrete customer behavior and deeper evidence ready when needed
- Build trust with partners, challenge assumptions constructively, and stay involved as research becomes product direction
- Strengthen the team's research practice through mentorship, critique, and hiring
Product Research is part of Rippling's Product Design organization. The team studies questions across HR, IT, and Finance that can materially change what Rippling builds. It is a small, hands-on team working on questions that do not arrive neatly scoped. Researchers follow questions into customer operations, product details, and data; recruit needed participants; and build tools or prototypes when useful.
REQUIREMENTS:
- A record of applied research on complex products, services, or organizations, including work that influenced product direction before the solution was settled. Experience with B2B software or business operations is especially relevant.
- Strong qualitative research skills and sound judgment about when quantitative, behavioral, market, or competitive evidence would strengthen the answer
- Inductive and systems thinking: ability to move from specific observations to useful explanations while accounting for roles, rules, and dependencies
- Product and business judgment: ability to identify the question that matters, recognize meaningful opportunities, and recommend directions without overstating evidence
- Exceptional writing and storytelling: ability to lead with the point, make it tangible through examples, and adjust detail for product teams and senior leaders
- Ability to build trust with demanding partners, disagree clearly, and help teams make decisions
- Independence in environments with limited established process; ability to create plans, recruit participants, and carry work from ambiguous questions through useful conclusions
- Curiosity about where AI might change business operations, paired with judgment about where customers will trust it to act
- Habit of learning unfamiliar domains and willingness to make needed tools—exploring products hands-on, using data, prototyping, or working with AI tools
