user research jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-09-28, user research appears in 2,670 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — Product Manager has the most postings mentioning user research, with demand down 68% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-28
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Frequently asked questions about user research
+Is user research in demand in 2026?
Yes. user research appears in 2,670 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, with demand down 68% vs the prior 4 weeks. Product Manager accounts for the most postings mentioning user research (41.2% of all postings mentioning user research).
+What jobs require user research?
According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, among roles with at least 20 postings, the highest shares mentioning user research are UX Designer (32.1% of that role’s postings mention user research), UI/UX Designer (28.0% of that role’s postings mention user research), Product Designer (27.3% of that role’s postings mention user research).
+What skills are commonly paired with user research?
Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-09-28), user research most often appears alongside prototyping, Product Management, A/B testing, design systems, Figma.
+Where is user research most in demand?
As of 2026-09-28, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring user research are San Francisco, New York City, London, Berlin, Toronto, according to the Skillenai jobs index.
+How can I keep up with new user research content and jobs?
Skillenai indexes news, blog posts, and research papers mentioning user research alongside the jobs index. You can subscribe to a daily email digest of new user research content from your Skillenai account.
Weekly job postings requiring user research — last 90 days
Salary distribution
Box = 25th–75th percentile · tick = median · whisker = 10th–90th · USD, annualized
Roles most likely to require user research
Among roles with at least 20 postings in the same period.
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | % of role postings mentioning skill |
|---|---|---|
| UX Designer | 166 | 32.1% |
| UI/UX Designer | 75 | 28.0% |
| Product Designer | 767 | 27.3% |
| UX/UI Designer | 42 | 24.7% |
| Product Design Manager | 5 | 22.7% |
| UX Researcher | 42 | 20.3% |
| Interaction Designer | 6 | 18.8% |
| AI Product Designer | 4 | 16.7% |
| UX Engineer | 4 | 14.8% |
| Lead Product Manager | 8 | 11.9% |
Roles with the most user research postings
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | Share of skill postings |
|---|---|---|
| Product Manager | 1,101 | 41.2% |
| Product Designer | 767 | 28.7% |
| UX Designer | 166 | 6.2% |
| Product Owner | 139 | 5.2% |
| UI/UX Designer | 75 | 2.8% |
| UX Researcher | 42 | 1.6% |
| UX/UI Designer | 42 | 1.6% |
| Technical Product Manager | 24 | 0.9% |
| Software Engineer | 12 | 0.4% |
| AI Product Manager | 10 | 0.4% |
Top metros hiring for user research
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 127 | 4.8% |
| New York City | 124 | 4.6% |
| London | 85 | 3.2% |
| Berlin | 60 | 2.2% |
| Toronto | 56 | 2.1% |
| Singapore | 48 | 1.8% |
| Seoul | 38 | 1.4% |
| Sydney | 38 | 1.4% |
| Tokyo | 35 | 1.3% |
Skills commonly paired with user research
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How this was computed
Counts derive from the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28. Skills are resolved against the Skillenai canonical taxonomy, so the same entity is counted whether a posting writes 'Python', 'Python 3', or 'python'. Role prevalence divides postings mentioning user research by all postings for each role in the same window, ranking roles with at least 20 postings. Role distribution divides each role’s user research postings by all user research postings, including postings without a role. Shares need not sum to 100% for the displayed roles. Pages refresh weekly (or daily for the top-50 most-requested skills).
- source
- Skillenai jobs index, deduplicated daily
- entity_id
- 482d76d4e026700e
- data_as_of
- 2026-09-28
- window_days
- 90
The demand, skills, and geo numbers on this page come from the same Skillenai labor market index that powers our API. Use it for compensation benchmarking, hiring-competition analysis, and skill-adoption tracking.
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