The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world’s leading independent platform for digital advertising, with nearly 4,000 employees across more than 30 offices. Our technology helps advertisers reach the right audiences across the open internet — from streaming TV and podcasts to mobile apps, news, and more.
Advertising powers the content people love. By making it more transparent, effective, and responsible, we help support trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and creators worldwide. The world’s brands and agencies rely on us to reach their customers and grow their businesses responsibly.
The scale of our platform brings unique technical challenges — from processing massive datasets in real time to building systems that operate reliably on a global scale. When you work here, your impact is worldwide. We welcome diverse perspectives, encourage curiosity, and build teams that learn from one another. If you’re driven to solve meaningful challenges, we’d love to meet you.
What we do:
We are a fast-growing UX team that consists of innovators from Blizzard, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, McKinsey Digital, and more. We are on a mission to build robust yet elegant solutions that challenge the world's best user-centered platforms. Our extraordinary cross-functional UX/UI team relentlessly experiments with platform technologies, advanced computing capabilities, and groundbreaking user interface methods to make our users' product experience seamless and natural. As a Principal Researcher, you will be part of a team that thrives on collaboration and communication. We are a tight-knit, passionate team aiming for our research and insights to have a massive impact at The Trade Desk and on the advertising ecosystem. We want to make advertising better for everyone involved, so our research spans advertisers, publishers, and consumers. Come bring your unique perspective to our team and help us build a research practice that will impact our customers, partners, and end users!
What you'll do:
- Lead research across multiple product areas, partnering closely with product owners, engineering and design leads as well as our business counterparts.
- Scope and complete strategic projects from early concepts through post-release measurement and iteration, integrating both qualitative and quantitative approaches along the way.
- Lead and mentor a growing team of researchers, providing guidance and coaching to your colleagues on the UX and Product teams.
- Be creative and resourceful in your approach to gathering insights, utilizing your relationships with clients and business partners, and knowing when to scale with vendors and secondary research.
- Build relationships and collaborate with our business team on projects as well as conducting research with clients to understand their needs, problems and how to improve their end-to-end journey.
- Influence and inform our product process - defining and evangelizing metrics and generating innovative ideas to expand our understanding of our users and our business.
- Communicate and share insights from your research to the larger organization and identifying creative ways for the research team to share findings with a broader audience.
- Drive aspects of building out our research infrastructure and operations (e.g., developing research programs, evaluating research tools, etc)
Who you are:
- 12+ years of experience as a user researcher at a technology company
- Possess the leadership skills to drive research programs to strategic impact using a breadth and depth of mixed method research approaches
- You get to the “so what” and can synthesize data from multiple sources (primary, secondary) to surface insights that are valuable and feasible for the business
- You have expertise in championing research and data-informed decisions across an organization and work with team members to identify areas of high impact for research.
- You are comfortable working independently on complex or ambiguous problems and get creative when you have resource constraints.
- You are a natural storyteller and know how to deliver your research findings to communicate in a way that engages stakeholders and diverse audiences, including executives.
- You are passionate about research and stay up to date with the latest user research trends, best practices, technologies, and tools.
- Research experience in B2B and advertising tech is a big plus.
The Trade Desk does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firm recruiters. Fees will not be paid in the event a candidate submitted by a recruiter without an agreement in place is hired; such resumes will be deemed the sole property of The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.
As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
Please reach out to us at accommodations@thetradedesk.com to request an accommodation or discuss any accessibility needs you may require to access our Company Website or navigate any part of the hiring process.
When you contact us, please include your preferred contact details and specify the nature of your accommodation request or questions. Any information you share will be handled confidentially and will not impact our hiring decisions.
Skills Required
- 12+ years of experience as a user researcher at a technology company
- Leadership skills to drive research programs to strategic impact
- Breadth and depth of mixed-method research approaches (qualitative and quantitative)
- Ability to scope and complete strategic projects from early concepts through post-release measurement
- Experience mentoring and leading a team of researchers
- Ability to synthesize data from multiple sources and surface actionable insights
- Experience championing research and driving data-informed decisions across an organization
- Comfortable working independently on complex or ambiguous problems
- Strong storytelling and communication skills for diverse audiences including executives
- Passion for research and staying up to date with research trends, best practices, technologies, and tools
- Research experience in B2B and advertising technology
The Trade Desk Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about The Trade Desk and has not been reviewed or approved by The Trade Desk.
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Affordable Benefits — Healthcare premiums are often paid in full for employees and dependents, reducing out-of-pocket costs. Coverage includes medical, dental, and vision alongside mental health and wellness support.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Packages commonly include new-hire stock grants, a generous Employee Stock Purchase Plan, and equity refreshers tied to performance. Feedback suggests equity meaningfully boosts total compensation alongside base pay and bonuses.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Generous PTO, paid holidays, paid sick time, and sabbaticals are available. Paid parental leave and extensive family-planning support broaden time-off and caregiving coverage.
The Trade Desk Insights
What We Do
The Trade Desk is changing the way global brands and their agencies advertise to audiences around the world. Our mission is to transform media for the benefit of humankind. Our media-buying platform helps brands deliver a more insightful and relevant ad experience for consumers — and sets a new standard for reach, accuracy, and transparency.
Why Work With Us
With up to 11 million queries per second and SLAs in the milliseconds, we’re tackling data and software challenges at massive scale. While we’re growing fast, investing in our value based company culture remains one of our top priorities. If you’re talented, driven, and hungry to bring something entirely new and wildly ambitious, let's talk.
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