Principal Design Researcher

About this role

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.

Who We Are Looking For

The Trade Desk is seeking a Principal Design Researcher to lead meaningful customer research that shapes our next-generation product vision — with a focus spanning the Kokai customer journey, our Core and Signature use cases, and emerging areas like AI. This is a senior individual-contributor research leadership role for someone who is energized by getting close to customers, uncovering what they truly need, and turning that understanding into a clear, evidence-based vision for where the product should go next. The Trade Desk is transforming the way advertising is bought, sold, and consumed as a global leader in the programmatic industry. As Kokai matures as the backbone of the end-to-end customer journey, and as our Core and Signature use cases continue to evolve, this role will build the customer understanding that informs what comes next: where our platform should go, what problems are worth solving, and how we know we're solving them well. Our industry is complicated, but we don't believe our platform should be. As Principal Design Researcher, you will own the end-to-end research vision and execution across a defined set of strategic priorities: Kokai customer journey mapping, Core and Signature use cases, and next-generation product exploration — including AI where it serves genuine customer needs. You will anchor this work in a clearly defined set of customer stories that keep the whole design organization grounded in real customer needs rather than assumptions. You will bring a rare combination of rigorous research craft and product thinking, with a genuine curiosity about how people work, decide, and navigate complexity within our platform. This is not a tooling or infrastructure role; it is a hands-on research leadership role focused on deeply understanding our customers and using that understanding to inform what we build next. You will serve as a strategic research partner to Product, Engineering, Data Science, and UX Leadership, bringing customer evidence into the room for major product direction decisions. This role reports directly to the Vice President of UX Design and is a key member of the UX leadership team at The Trade Desk, as well as a key member of our Core UX team — looking across all design initiatives for the team, including current and next-generation initiatives.

What You Will Be Doing As Principal Design Researcher at The Trade Desk, you will: Build Deep Customer Understanding to Inform Next-Generation Product Vision • Lead research that uncovers what customers genuinely need, where they struggle, and where real opportunity lies — across the Kokai customer journey, Core and Signature use cases, and emerging areas like AI • Translate ambiguous problems and complex workflows into clear research questions, and clear research questions into a well-evidenced point of view on where the product should go next • Build and maintain a clearly defined set of customer stories that ground product and design decisions in real customer needs, not assumptions • Bring a grounded, evidence-based perspective on human-AI collaboration and complex customer journeys in advertising workflows, shaped by direct observation of real customer behavior • Partner with UX Leadership and Product to align the research agenda with broader product and company strategy Lead End-to-End Research Execution • Lead hands-on, rigorous research across the Kokai customer journey, Core and Signature use cases, and next-generation product concepts, including AI — from early generative discovery through detailed evaluative research and post-launch measurement • Map the end-to-end Kokai customer journey, identifying moments of friction, delight, and opportunity across Core and Signature use cases • Test early concepts with customers to gather feedback and align stakeholders around a shared, evidence-backed direction before heavy investment • Design and drive research programs that explore how customers build trust, adopt new capabilities, and adapt their workflows as the product evolves • Maintain and evolve the team's set of customer stories, keeping them current as customer needs shift • Partner closely with Data Science and Engineering to ensure product direction and customer understanding evolve together, not in isolation Strengthen Research Practice Across the Team • Share research methods, findings, and frameworks that help the broader design team ground their work in real customer evidence • Support fellow researchers and designers with methodological guidance on journey mapping, evaluative research, and generative discovery • Ensure research accounts for accessibility, inclusion, and usability across a wide range of customer sophistication and contexts • Contribute to a shared vocabulary and set of frameworks — including the team's customer stories — that help the broader design team make confident, customer-grounded decisions Partner Cross-Functionally to Bring Customer Evidence Into Prod

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