ApprovalMax
UX Researcher
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About ApprovalMax
ApprovalMax provides end-to-end accounts payable automation for businesses using cloud accounting systems such as Xero and QuickBooks Online. We have 20,000+ businesses worldwide across 70+ countries and strong product-market fit built over 8+ years. Our team is distributed across the UK, Serbia, Moldova, and Portugal, and we work remote-first.
Why this role exists
We recently sat down with 20 people across the business to understand how product decisions get made here. It gave us a clear, shared picture of where we're strong and where we have real opportunities to sharpen how we work. Three stood out: bringing user research in earlier so we can validate ideas before we build, measuring whether launches land through meaningful post-launch metrics, and moving from a reactive rhythm to a more proactive one. Underpinning all three is the opportunity to establish a dedicated, independent research capability, so insight is gathered consistently and objectively, and every team can draw on the same trusted evidence base.
This is what the role is here to build. You are our first dedicated UX Researcher and the founder of a research function inside Product Experience. Your job is to make product decisions here evidence-led: to put a validation step in place before we build, to establish honest post-launch measurement, and to be the independent, trusted voice whose findings give every team a shared footing. This is a build-from-the-ground-up role. There is no existing research practice, no participant pool, and no research ops team behind you. That's the opportunity.
Role purpose
You will build ApprovalMax's research practice from zero and use it to change how we decide what to build. In a typical month six months in, you'll be running a mix of generative and evaluative studies, interviews and usability sessions with accountants, bookkeepers and finance teams, paired with behavioural data, and turning what you find into recommendations that actually move the roadmap. You'll partner closely with Product Managers to make research a normal, expected part of how they work, rather than something that happens occasionally when there's time.
Just as important as running studies is bringing the wider team with you. You'll facilitate workshops that pull PMs, designers and engineers into the research rather than presenting at them, and you'll build trust and get buy-in from Customer Success and Customer Support so they help open the door to our customers. Our users are busy, risk-averse finance professionals who protect their time; earning access to them, and treating the internal teams who own those relationships with care, is core to the job.
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You will be building the plane while flying it. Some months you'll be defining processes and choosing tools; others you'll be deep in fieldwork. If you need an established process and a ready pool of easy participants to be effective, this won't suit you. If the idea of founding something and setting the standard for how a company listens to its users is what gets you up in the morning, it will.
This role is currently open to candidates based in the UK, Moldova, or Serbia only.
Key responsibilities
- Found the research practice. Establish a lean, repeatable way of doing research at ApprovalMax, choosing the tooling, defining lightweight process, and setting the standard for rigour, without a large research ops function behind you.
- Install validation before build. Create a practical evaluative-research step (usability testing, concept testing, prototype validation) so designs are tested before and after they ship, not decided on assumption.
- Run generative research. Understand how accountants, bookkeepers and finance teams actually work, their workflows, jobs-to-be-done and unmet needs, including mapping their real processes and journeys, so we shape what we build around how they operate, not how we assume they do.
- Mix qual and quant. Pair interviews and usability sessions with behavioural data (Amplitude) and surveys, and know which method fits which decision.
- Recruit and reach a hard audience. Build repeatable ways to recruit and run research with busy, protective, hard-to-reach B2B finance users, partnering with Customer Success and Support to earn and protect that access.
- Synthesise and influence. Turn findings into clear insights and concrete product recommendations, and get stakeholders to act on them, including when the finding is uncomfortable. Build durable artefacts the team keeps using, personas, journey maps, insight repositories, and deliver hard messages with clarity and care.
- Facilitate and bring teams along. Run workshops and sessions that involve PMs, designers and engineers directly in research, making evidence a shared habit rather than something handed down.
- Close the loop with measurement. Help define meaningful post-launch KPIs and monitor whether what we shipped actually worked.
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Must-haves
- You have independently led research end to end, scoping the question, setting the approach, choosing methods, running it, and landing a recommendation, and can set a research strategy across a whole product area or project, not just run one-off studies.
- You use both qualitative and quantitative methods, interviews, usability testing, surveys, observational research, behavioural analysis, and can map user workflows and journeys, and explain when and why you'd choose each.
- You can point to specific product decisions that changed because of your research. This is the capability we care about most.
- You communicate with real clarity and handle stakeholders with care, you can deliver findings a team doesn't want to hear and still bring them with you, and you facilitate workshops that engage cross-functional teams rather than talk at them.
- You are comfortable building a research practice from the ground up in a lean, ambiguous environment.
- You have run research with business, professional or otherwise hard-to-reach users, or can show us a specific, realistic plan for how you'd do it here.
Nice-to-haves
- Exposure to B2B SaaS, fintech, accounting or finance-adjacent products.
- You've set up research operations or repeatable research process from scratch before.
- Experience defining post-launch success metrics alongside product analytics.
- Comfort with Amplitude or a similar behavioural analytics tool.
This role is not for you if…
- You need a large research ops team and a ready pool of easy-to-recruit users to be effective.
- You see yourself as a pure methodologist who runs beautiful studies and hands off reports, rather than someone who drives decisions and owns whether anything changed.
- You're uncomfortable with ambiguity and prefer established process and a defined lane.
- You find it hard to deliver a difficult message diplomatically to people who may not want to hear it.
What We Offer
- Salary, up to £70,000, dependent on experience.
- Health Insurance and Health & Wellbeing Benefit Stipend
- Home Office Setup - one-off £500 reimbursement, post probation
- Hybrid working with flexibility around how and when you do your best work.
- 26 days annual leave plus UK public holidays.
- 1 day Birthday Leave
- Service-years recognition financial reward
- Regular performance-based compensation reviews
- Growing international business with 20,000+ subscribers
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