Location
Description
The Port of San Francisco is an enterprise agency of the City and County of San Francisco and is governed by a Commission of five members appointed by the Mayor. The Port Commission is responsible for overseeing a broad range of waterfront commercial, maritime, and public access facilities that are held in public trust for the people of California. The Port’s jurisdiction covers approximately 7.5 miles of waterfront land from Pier 98, near Hunter’s Point in the southern part of San Francisco, to Fisherman’s Wharf in the northern part of the City.
The Port’s diverse business portfolio includes over 550 ground, commercial, retail, office, industrial and maritime industrial leases including cargo shipping, layberthing, excursion boats, ferry boats, fishing and fish processing/distribution, tourism, filming, harbor services, and cruise operations. With some of the most flexible cargo handling facilities on the West Coast, as well as naturally deep water, the Port can handle various types of cargo such as, dry-bulk, neo-bulk, roll-on/roll-off, and project cargoes.
The Port of San Francisco has many internationally recognized landmarks such as Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39, the Exploratorium, the Ferry Building and Oracle Park, home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team. With its unique and historic properties, the Port is home to a variety of tenants and uses. The Port Commission over the last five decades has led a remarkable transformation of the Port; maintaining its industrial maritime heritage while developing new uses, including commercial and public activities, that have helped San Francisco remain one of the most visited and popular cities on the globe.
For more information about the Port of San Francisco, visit SFPort.com. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Role descriptionThe Port of San Francisco is embarking on a multi-year project to replace the organization’s legacy enterprise business applications with a modern, unified platform built on Salesforce. This project will lead the replacement and migration of Port Enterprise technologies that have reached end-of-life with modern systems that support and promote the department's business capabilities. The project is focused on building and implementing data-rich, constituent-and user-focused, integrated systems. As a user researcher, the Senior User Research Analyst will conduct research with staff and stakeholders of the Port and synthesize that research into actionable insights for the product team.
Under direction, the Senior User Research Analyst:
- Plans, organizes, performs, delivers, directs and/or controls highly complex technology-related work products requiring industry or product expertise in broad areas of information technology.
- Ensures the Port’s modern platform meets the business needs of the Port and doesn’t just replicate the existing workflows.
- Develop and conducts workshops, brainstorming sessions, and other interactive activities with end-users, including employees, partners, and tenants, as applicable, to identify user needs and apply them to business capabilities.
- Evaluates the impact of the incremental improvements in the Port’s platform and suggest course correction and incremental improvement to maximize its effectiveness.
- Responsible for developing and maintaining system requirements for all Port Modernization projects.
- Collaborates closely with product, technology, and business stakeholders to ensure user research findings inform requirements, prioritization, and product decisions throughout the Port Modernization program.
- Directly contributes, as the voice of the end-users, in project and work prioritization discussions with the technology project management and leadership team, ensuring that user needs are always considered up-front.
- Leads the development and delivery of technology oriented organizational change management, including establishing relationships with and elevating change champions across the organization, developing training materials, and leading user adoption.
Ideal Candidate
- Is a highly independent thought leader that is ready and capable of identifying user experience needs and providing an evidence-based defense of those needs to leadership in prioritization discussions.
- Has experience with both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
- Has strong ability to define research questions and choose the right methodology.
- Has extensive experience conducting usability testing (remote and in-person).
- Demonstrates proficiency with research tools (e.g., UserTesting, Optimal Workshop, surveys).
- Has strong storytelling and communication skills—can translate insights into product direction.
- Has experience synthesizing data (affinity mapping, journey mapping, personas).
- Has a history of ability to work autonomously and manage multiple research projects.
- Has experience with rapid or iterative research in fast-paced environments.
- Has proven experience designing end‑to‑end services across digital and offline channels, ideally in a government or regulated environment.
- Shows ability to map complex service ecosystems, including people, processes, policies, technology, and channels.
Special Instructions
Possession of an associate degree in Business, Information Technology, Product Design, Industrial Design, Multi-Media Arts, or closely related field from an accredited college or university OR its equivalent in terms of total course credits/units [ i.e., at least sixty (60) semester or ninety (90) quarter credits/units with a minimum of twenty (20) semester or thirty (30) quarter credits/units in computer science or a closely related field].
AND
Two (2) years of recent and verifiable experience working as a product manager, product designer, implementation manager, technology trainer, UX designer, service designer user researcher, or another closely related field.