Job Title : UX Researcher/Designer
Location : Chicago, IL
Duration : 6 Months
Job Description :
Company:
- Grant Thornton is a major Audit, Tax, and Advisory Services company offering a broad range of services in strategy and consulting, operations, technology and more across various industries.
- In the U.S., Grant Thornton delivers professional services through two specialized entities: Grant Thornton LLP, a licensed, certified public accounting (CPA) firm that provides audit and assurance services ? and Grant Thornton Advisors LLC (not a licensed CPA firm), which exclusively provides non-attest offerings, including tax and advisory services.
- In 2025, Grant Thornton formed a multinational, multidisciplinary platform with Grant Thornton Ireland. The platform offers a premier Trans-Atlantic advisory and tax practice, as well as independent American and Irish audit practices.
- With $2.7 billion in revenues and more than 50 offices spanning the U.S., Ireland and other territories, the platform delivers a singular client experience that includes enhanced solutions and capabilities, backed by powerful technologies and a roster of 12,000 quality-driven professionals.
Open Positions: 2
Location: 100% Remote
Duration: Contract – 6 months with potential to extend
Overview:
- Grant Thornton is hiring a contract UX Researcher to assist with the Discovery phase for our internal web apps. Their job: figure out what users need and turn that into clear direction for product, design, and engineering.
- They’ll work under a Lead US Designer and with Product Managers, Engineers and Business Stakeholders on this initiative.
Responsibilities:
- Lead discovery: Plan and run user research to understand jobs, pain points, and workflows.
- Facilitate sessions: Run interviews, workshops, and stakeholder discussions—ask the “obvious” questions that surface assumptions.
- Summarize what they learn: Turn notes into clear findings, “what this means,” and recommend next steps.
- Map the experience - Create:
o Role snapshots (personas): brief summaries of user types and needs.
o Step-by-step journeys: how users currently work, where it breaks, and the better future state.
o Simple screen sketches (wireframes) & flow diagrams: quick visuals that show how a task should work.
o Keep everyone aligned: Present short, clear readouts; document decisions; maintain a simple research archive.
What You Will Deliver:
- Tools you know: Figma, Mural, Office
- A practical UX plan and interview results.
- A short deck communicating findings → what it means → recommended actions.
- Lean personas for key roles.
- Current-state and future-state journeys with pain points and simple success measures.
- Task/flow diagrams and low-fi wireframes for critical paths.
- A prioritized UX backlog.
- Mockups as neccesary.
WHAT WE NEED FROM EVERY CANDIDATE:
- Resume with hourly rate, location, time-zone overlap.
- 2–3 samples (journey map, personas, insights readout, low-fi wires). Redactions OK.
- Best discovery project (goal, what you did, outcome).
- Examples from enterprise or B2B applications
- Start date and weekly capacity
MUST HAVES:
- 4–7+ years doing user research on product teams (enterprise or B2B preferred).
- Tools you know: Figma, Mural, Office
- Comfortable planning and running interviews, observing real work, testing early ideas, and doing quick usability checks.
- Strong at turning raw notes into clear insights and prioritized recommendations.
- Can independently produce personas, journeys, task flows, and low-fidelity wireframes in Figma, Mural, or similar.
- Confident facilitator; good at guiding groups, handling pushback, and driving to clarity.
- Excellent written and verbal communication—exec-friendly and concise.
Nice to Haves:
- Design experience and portfolio of enterprise-related work, or similar.
- Experience in complex or regulated spaces (tax, audit, finance, healthcare, public
- sector).
- Basic survey skills to complement interviews.
- Service design exposure (e.g., mapping processes).
- Light Research Ops (consent, recruiting, templates).
- User testing and feedback gathering
- Design experience with high-fidelity mockup and/or clickable prototypes.
Interview Process:
- 30 minute technical interview with Director
30 minute interview with Teammate