Job Title: Senior User Experience (UX) Researcher

Headquarters: Philadelphia, PA, USA URL: https://www.sports-reference.com/

Job Summary

Sports Reference, LLC is searching for a Senior User Experience (UX) Researcher to help build new products and features that empower users to enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love. They currently serve 20 million (and growing) monthly users through their free, ad-supported Reference sites (Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com, etc.) and Stathead.com, their SaaS offering that provides powerful search and filtering capabilities for deeper exploration of their vast databases. In 2023, they acquired Immaculate Grid, the viral baseball trivia game, and have since launched ad-supported grid games for basketball, football, hockey, and soccer.

To Apply

Please visit their jobs website at https://sports-reference-llc.breezy.hr/ and submit your resume and a cover letter for this position. As a postscript (p.s.) at the end of your cover letter, please include a question you’ve found insightful when talking to users to demonstrate that you read the job description.

Phone interviews will begin the week of January 19th, 2026. Applications arriving after this date will be considered at the discretion of the hiring manager. You can find a general outline of their interview process here: https://www.sports-reference.com/job-interview-process.html

Our Purpose and Values

Purpose: Democratize data, so their users enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love.

Values:

Respect for their users, the athletes they cover, and their team
Craftsmanship in building tools and products
Reliable tools and services that meet their users' needs every day
Data democratization. They publish many data sets for emerging and underserved sports. The New York Times covered their recognition of the Negro Leagues as major leagues in the summer of 2021. They added women’s college basketball data to their sites in 2023 and now have the only publicly available database of every score in women’s NCAA Division 1 history.

They encourage team members to participate in company discussions and share new ideas, features, or potential solutions to problems.

Background

Are you a seasoned researcher who believes that great products aren't built on guesses, but on a deep, rigorous understanding of user behavior?

Sports Reference is hiring a Senior UX Researcher to serve as the strategic engine of insight for their entire Product Department. They serve hundreds of millions of users across Baseball Reference, Basketball Reference, Pro Football Reference, and Immaculate Grid. They need you to help them uncover the "why" behind the "what" for those users.

This is a senior-level role designed for someone who wants to own the research function, establish best-in-class processes, and ensure that their products are built on a foundation of actionable human insights.

The Role: Architect of Discovery

Reporting into the Product Department, you will be the go-to expert for asking questions of their audience. While their product teams are empowered to make decisions, you will be the partner who ensures those decisions are informed by high-quality evidence.

What You’ll Achieve

They are looking for a leader who can take their existing foundation — inspired by Continuous Discovery Habits — and scale it. In your first year, you will:

Own Discovery & Exploratory Research: You will lead the charge in identifying new opportunities by uncovering the unmet needs and hidden motivations of sports fans.
Consult on Evaluative Research: You will partner with Product Managers, Designers, and Product Marketers to design effective usability tests and evaluative studies, ensuring they are building the right things the right way.
Drive Strategic Projects: Beyond individual team goals, you will execute research projects that answer high-level strategic questions for the company, regularly presenting your findings to the entire organization.
Curate a Knowledge Legacy: You will build and manage a centralized research repository, ensuring that every survey and interview contributes to a growing, accessible knowledge base.
Optimize the Research Pipeline: You’ll manage and grow their pool of research participants (currently via HubSpot), using optimization techniques to ensure they have a healthy, representative pipeline of fans to talk to.
Standardize Research Excellence: You will set up the processes, rituals, and best practices for research at Sports Reference, gaining buy-in across the organization for a data-informed culture.

Who You Are

An Expert Practitioner: You have a proven track record of designing surveys, conducting deep-dive interviews, and—most importantly—summarizing findings into insights that actually change product roadmaps.
A Collaborative Consultant: You enjoy working with cross-functional partners, helping them sharpen their questions and translating their needs into effective research designs.
A Process Builder: You don’t just "do" research; you build the systems that make research scalable, repeatable, and impactful.

At Sports Reference, they value products that are "aggressively functional." They need a researcher who shares that spirit — someone who provides clear, useful, and necessary insights that help them make it simple and engaging for fans to enjoy the sports they love.

Taking Insight to the Next Level

As they develop their next generation of products, the speed and quality of their learning will be their greatest competitive advantage. They have the users, and they have the data. Now they need the dedicated expertise to translate those assets into a deep understanding of user behavior and intent.

In this role, you will have a unique seat at the table. You will work closely with their Executive Director of Product, creating a powerful synergy between her background in research design and your proven experience in product environments.

This is a "best of both worlds" opportunity:

Strategic Coaching: You’ll have a high-level thought partner to help refine complex research methodologies and explore new ways of gathering evidence.
Immediate Influence: You will have the autonomy to execute and the mandate to influence the direction of their entire product suite.
Widespread Impact: Your work won't be siloed. By identifying opportunities and validating assumptions, you will directly shape the roadmaps of every cross-functional team at the company.

What Success Looks Like

They expect the person in this role to quickly become the connective tissue of their Product Department. You will help them move from "we think" to "we know," reducing risk for their engineers and designers while uncovering the "aha!" moments that drive long-term user loyalty.

If you are a researcher who wants your work to be seen, felt, and acted upon by hundreds of millions of users, this is the place to do it.

Goals and Tasks for Your First Year (In rough order of importance)

Must-Reach Goals and Tasks

Design, develop, and curate exploratory research at Sports Reference. The foundation they already have was inspired by Continuous Discovery Habits. Some experience with that system would be seen as a plus but is not required for this role. Ultimately, they need someone who will 1) be accountable for making sure their entire Product Department is engaged in regularly talking to users; 2) lead efforts in synthesizing what they learn to identify new opportunities; and 3) engage with product teams to transform any opportunities into assumptions they can test.
Collaborate on research design with Product Managers, Designers, and Product Marketers to help product teams build knowledge about their users and their products.
Propose and execute research projects intended to answer key strategic questions that are outside the scope of any one product team. Regularly synthesize and present findings to the company.
Optimize user recruitment and engagement, ensuring they have a healthy, representative pipeline of fans to talk to. They currently manage their pool of potential research participants in HubSpot. Some experience with a CRM would be seen as a plus but is not required for this role.
Manage a centralized research repository, ensuring that insights from surveys, interviews, projects, etc. contribute to a growing, accessible knowledge base for the whole company.
Establish best practices for research at Sports Reference, gaining buy-in across the organization to make research efforts scalable, sound, and insightful.

Nice-to-Reach Goals and Tasks

Synthesize qualitative and quantitative data, connecting the dots to provide a holistic view of the user experience.
Introduce new tools that would enhance their research processes.

Qualifications and Skills

A qualified candidate will satisfy the following:

Demonstrated ability to lead a research project, independently, from beginning to end in service of an organization’s strategic goals. In one or more projects, you should have:
- Developed and analyzed a survey,
- Conducted and synthesized user interviews, and
- Summarized findings and proposed next steps.
Evidence that you are capable of meeting many of the goals listed above.
Have a history of getting things done (and done well).
This position will have no direct reports at this time.
If you don’t think your application will have evidence that you can meet all of the "nice-to-reach goals and tasks" above but still are interested in the job and otherwise qualify, please apply. Nobody checks every box—they’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

Salary

Salary range starting at $111,000 for U.S. based employees. They are a remote-first company and determine their pay range for this position based on the market rates for Philadelphia, their home base. The salary offered will be based on your experience and skill level.

For candidates outside of the United States, they will calculate a local market rate based on pay for comparable positions in that market and comparable benefits packages when possible.

Annual bonuses are variable and are tied to a percentage of the company's end of year profits and the employee's time worked and salary earned during the year. In the last three years, they have averaged 15% of an employee’s annual salary.

Benefits

Even though they are a small company, Sports Reference has a generous benefits package.

The total value of their benefits package is up to $30,000.
They cover full health and dental insurance costs for full-time employees and their dependent children. They cover 70%-80% of plans for an entire family.
They have a 401k with a match on your contributions up to 4% of your base salary. The 401k has many low cost investing options.
They pay all premiums for company-sponsored life and long-term disability insurance for all employees.
They provide up to $7,000/year in continuing education benefits.
Even if you live in or near Philly, you have the option to work remotely as much as you choose. They generally work a standard workday, but with flexibility to adjust hours within that framework.
Any parent welcoming a new child to their family is entitled to 13 weeks of fully paid leave, and up to an additional 39 weeks at half-time.
Employees begin with 18 days of PTO per year and an additional 8 paid company holidays and accrue sick leave at the rate of one day per month.
They will generally buy you whatever equipment will make you the most productive.
They typically will pay for reasonable moving-related expenses related to your acceptance of a position with Sports Reference. Please ask if you have questions regarding this benefit.
They provide a $66/month remote work stipend to cover the cost of internet access and incidental expenses.
For employees outside the United States, they will work to provide equivalent benefits or additional compensation.

Other Information

Sports Reference's first site was launched in 2000. They have bootstrapped themselves to 42 full-time employees and have no venture capital backing.
They are willing to provide accommodations for candidates for whom the timing or structure of their interview process may be challenging. This may include early morning or evening interview times or provide payment to cover child care expenses if needed. If you are applying for a role where verbal communication is not a significant requirement, they may consider an alternative form of interview as is reasonably possible and suitable. Similarly, if an extended period of internet connectivity is a challenge, they may consider an alternate form of interview. If they invite you to interview, please let them know of any possibly necessary accommodations.
Their typical interview process is described at https://www.sports-reference.com/job-interview-process.html
Sports Reference is a remote-first company. Sports Reference is located in Philadelphia and non-Philadelphia candidates will be considered on an equal footing to those who are local. Presently, all Sports Reference employees are working remotely at least some of the time, but those in the Philly area may work from the office on days of their choosing.
This is a full-time position.
Employment at Sports Reference LLC is at-will and this position is an at-will appointment.
Applicants are generally preferred to have a legal right to work in the United States. Please let them know in your application if you do not have the right to work in the United States. They have hired two employees located outside of the United States, so they will consider foreign applicants.
100% of their merchandise sales support youth sports.

Sports Reference is a growing company, and your work will be highly visible and have a definite and immediate impact (Read about them in the New York Times and The Athletic ($)). They reached over 20 million users each month and served over 2.0 billion pages in 2023.

Sports Reference provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship status, civil union status, color, discrimination, domestic partnership status, domestic violence victim status, familial status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, gender transition, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, marriage to a co-worker, mental or physical disability or illness, military service, military and veteran status, national origin (including physical, cultural, or linguistic characteristics), nationality, parental leave, pregnancy (including childbirth, breastfeeding or medical or common conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth), race (including traits that are historically associated with race, such as hair texture and protective hairstyles, including braids, locks and twists), religion, retaliation, sexual harassment, sexual or affectional orientation (actual or perceived, whether or not traditionally associated with the person’s designated sex at birth), status with regard to public assistance, transgender identity, unfavorable discharge of military status (less than “honorable” but not “dishonorable”), or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws and ordinances, or on the basis of sports franchise preferences.

To apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/sports-reference-senior-user-experience-ux-researcher