Associate Director, Design Research

At WHOOP, we’re on a mission to unlock human performance and healthspan. WHOOP empowers members to perform at a higher level through a deeper understanding of their bodies, behaviors, and daily lives.

WHOOP is hiring an Associate Director of Design Research to lead and scale the Design Research practice at WHOOP. This role will oversee Design Research, shaping how user feedback and experiences inform product innovation from early-stage insights to pre-launch validation studies to post-launch feedback. As a people-first leader, you will balance strategic direction, team development, and leadership evangalism—ensuring research rigor, creativity, and impact across the product lifecycle.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Provide strategic leadership for the design research team, ensuring alignment with key stakeholders and organizational priorities.

- Evangelize the importance of user insights and the role of design research in the product and hardware development lifecycle to WHOOP senior leadership.

- Scale research impact, working closely with cross-functional leaders to identify opportunities for research and set expectations for mixed-methods research, ensuring research is positioned as a critical input to decision-making.

- Partner closely with senior team members to review research needs, assess tradeoffs, and guide prioritization and research direction.

- Manage, coach, and develop a team of design researchers, fostering strong research craft, clear communication, and professional growth.

- Own relationships with external research vendors, including scoping projects, defining success criteria, and ensuring high-quality execution.

- Build a strong, cross-functional “voice of the member” for product decision-making in partnership with Consumer Insights, Analytics, and Membership Services.

QUALIFICATIONS:

- Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as human factors, design research, user experience research, design anthropology, psychology, or a related discipline.

- 5+ years of experience conducting user research for physical products, ideally within hardware, health, or consumer product environments.

- 5+ years of people management experience, including coaching, feedback, and performance development.

- Strong mixed-methods research background, with demonstrated application of qualitative and quantitative approaches to real-world products.

- Experience working within or alongside hardware development lifecycles (not software-only).

- Experience managing or partnering with external research vendors, including project scoping and execution.

- Ability to manage multiple workstreams, navigate ambiguity, and influence without direct authority across cross-functional teams.

- Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate complex insights to executive audiences.

- Strong commitment to embracing and leveraging AI tools in day-to-day tasks, ensuring AI-assisted work aligns with the same high-quality standards as personal contributions.