Staff User Researcher
Harvey is hiring a Staff User Researcher in San Francisco, United States. It pays $159k-$265k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Harvey.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this role Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Claude, Zapier AI and AI agents.
- Level classifies it as a lead role.
- Level lists 342 other open roles at Harvey.
AI in this role
At Harvey, we’re transforming how legal and professional services operate. By combining frontier agentic AI, an enterprise-grade platform, and deep domain expertise, we’re reshaping how critical knowledge work gets done for decades to come.
This is a rare chance to help build a generational company at a true inflection point. We have strong product-market fit and world-class investor support. We’re scaling fast and defining a new category in real time. The work is ambitious, the bar is high, and the opportunity for growth — personal, professional, and financial — is unmatched.
Our team moves fast, takes ownership, and is deeply committed to the mission — operating with intensity, staying close to our customers, and pushing each other for excellence. We live by three values: Decisiveness, Simplicity, and Job's Not Finished. We act quickly on clear judgment over perfect information, we believe simplicity is what scales, and we're never satisfied with where we are. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who share that drive, we'd love to build with you.
At Harvey, the future of professional services is being written today — and we’re just getting started.
Role OverviewHarvey is building the future of AI for legal professionals, and understanding our users is core to how we do that. We are looking for a seasoned strategic User Researcher to to join our research function. You are a senior individual contributor who drives high-impact research across multiple teams or a major product area. You move beyond single studies to shape problem definition, influence roadmaps, and elevate research quality through strong craft and partnership. You are comfortable with AI technologies and excited to build research and insight tooling to accelerate our workflows.
Success looks like teams meaningfully change direction based on your insights and influencing roadmap, research quality improves in the teams you support, and you are trusted as a strategic partner and moves at speed, where Harvey builds shared conviction around user truths.
This role directly reports to the Head of User Research and focuses on accelerating the quality and speed at which Harvey ships user-centered AI products. You have the opportunity to co-create tooling or identify the right capabilities to strengthen our research practice. You'll partner closely with research and design leadership, cross-functional stakeholders that keep research and insights running at peak efficiency.
It's a rare opportunity to shape how a category-defining AI company shapes its products from the ground up.
What You'll DoLead Complex Research Programs
Own research strategy for a product area or cross-team initiative
Design and execute end-to-end qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research
Identify patterns across studies and connect insights to product decisions
Research how legal professionals work with Harvey and outside of the platform. Translate that into product and design recommendations.
Shape Product Thinking
Partner closely with Product Managers and Designers to frame the right problems
Influence roadmaps by surfacing unmet user needs, risks, and opportunities
Push teams beyond validation toward deeper discovery
Develop strong legal domain expertise and excited to become an expert in both the Harvey product and the legal industry
Raise the Bar on Craft
Produce clear, compelling synthesis and storytelling
Identify where AI reduces friction in research process and comfortable building custom scripts, integrations, or AI agents where off-the-shelf tools fall short
Model strong research rigor, ethics, and judgment
Ability to prototype and ship research insight tooling improvements yourself before pulling in Eng support
Operate as a Trusted Partner
Bring rigor to ambiguous, fast-moving problem spaces where the underlying technology (and user expectations of it) shift quickly
Influence without authority across teams
Help partners develop stronger research instincts
5+ years of user research experience of digital products in fast-paced, high-growth or technically complex environments
Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors, Cognitive Science, or a related field required. Advanced degree preferred
Track record or portfolio of portfolio-level impact. Experience conducting and defining user research methodologies, integrating qualitative and quantitative insights into design and product strategy.
Demonstrated ability to navigate and simplify multifaceted, ambiguous problem spaces while maintaining a high bar for execution.
Exceptional storytelling and communication skills—capable of influencing cross-functional partners and aligning diverse perspectives.
Experience building or customizing internal tooling (Zapier workflows, Claude skills, Notion workflows, and custom GPTs or research agents) to support insight acceleration.
Strong design and product judgment and business acumen. Ability to engage deeply in design critiques and dedicated product area roadmap reviews to contribute insights into planning.
A collaborative, low-ego approach that helps teams move quickly, thoughtfully, and inclusively
Experience researching AI-powered technology products, and understand how to assess experiences and quality of conversational products.
$158,500 - $264,500
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#LI-MV1
Harvey is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities, and requests can be made by emailing accommodations@harvey.ai
How we rate this
Staff User Researcher at Harvey rates 75 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
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Skills and AI tools this role asks for
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- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
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- Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
- If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?
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- List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Claude, and Zapier AI. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
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