Senior UX Research Operations Manager

About Target:  

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’s Global UX team 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 role:  

As a Senior Research Operations Manager supporting our UX Research team, you’ll play a critical role in shaping Target’s evolving digital and enterprise experiences by enabling researchers to focus on uncovering user insights that drive impactful design solutions.

In this role, you will optimize the tools, processes, and partnerships necessary for scaling user research across the enterprise, ensuring high-quality outputs while improving efficiency and visibility of research work.

Our Research Operations practice focuses on enabling teams to scale user research by supporting participant management, tools and systems, and vendor relationships. You will work closely with UX Research leadership to improve research planning, execution, and outcomes, creating consistent, repeatable processes that empower teams to focus on delivering insights that align with business and guest needs of our product teams.

Responsibilities: 

• Manage and optimize research tools and platforms (e.g., participant recruitment, knowledge management, survey panels, and usability testing tools) 

• Ensure UX research studies are powered by the right participants, managing recruitment workflows, building diverse participant pools, and creating seamless, efficient processes that deliver results 

• Identify and implement new tools or enhancements to improve research workflows and scalability 

• Champion an enterprise-wide survey program, ensuring high-quality data collection and reporting for 200+ teams that use it  

• Establish mechanisms to increase visibility of research contributions across the enterprise and to leadership 

• Collaborate with Enterprise Insights and other research teams to streamline tool usage and enhance capabilities 

• Partner with the broader UX Operations team to create aligned, efficient systems across the UX portfolio 

About you:  

• Proven experience in research operations or a related field, such as program management or research coordination. 

• Passionate about exploring, evaluating, and optimizing tools and processes that elevate the role and value of user research—and you’re not afraid to roll up your sleeves and experiment 

• Experience working with UX research tools and supporting teams who use them (e.g., User Testing, Medallia, Qualtrics, dScout, other knowledge management systems and survey tools) 

• Experience managing vendor relationships and ensuring alignment to organizational goals 

• A deep understanding of UX research methodologies and practices, and how they are leveraged within the product model to support iterative design and development processes 

• Strong analytical and storytelling skills to demonstrate the impact of UX research at scale 

• High attention to detail ensures nothing falls through the cracks—spot potential issues before they arise and take a proactive approach to resolving them