---
title: 'Associate Director, Design Research at Whoop'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/associate-director-design-research-whoop-boston-sze24zp615kc'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-14'
---

# Associate Director, Design Research at Whoop

- **Company:** [Whoop](https://feeny.ai/companies/whoop)
- **Location:** Boston, MA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-09-28
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/whoop/654988f9-1021-4ec8-ae8a-fb7e7535e6e7

## Job description

At WHOOP, we’re on a mission to unlock human performance and healthspan. WHOOP empowers members to perform at a higher level through a deeper understanding of their bodies, behaviors, and daily lives. WHOOP is hiring an Associate Director of Design Research to lead and scale the Design Research practice at WHOOP. This role will oversee Design Research, shaping how user feedback and experiences inform product innovation from early-stage insights to pre-launch validation studies to post-launch feedback. As a people-first leader, you will balance strategic direction, team development, and leadership evangalism—ensuring research rigor, creativity, and impact across the product lifecycle.

## RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Provide strategic leadership for the design research team, ensuring alignment with key stakeholders and organizational priorities.
- Evangelize the importance of user insights and the role of design research in the product and hardware development lifecycle to WHOOP senior leadership.
- Scale research impact, working closely with cross-functional leaders to identify opportunities for research and set expectations for mixed-methods research, ensuring research is positioned as a critical input to decision-making.
- Partner closely with senior team members to review research needs, assess tradeoffs, and guide prioritization and research direction.
- Manage, coach, and develop a team of design researchers, fostering strong research craft, clear communication, and professional growth.
- Own relationships with external research vendors, including scoping projects, defining success criteria, and ensuring high-quality execution.
- Build a strong, cross-functional “voice of the member” for product decision-making in partnership with Consumer Insights, Analytics, and Membership Services.

## QUALIFICATIONS:

- Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as human factors, design research, user experience research, design anthropology, psychology, or a related discipline.
- 5+ years of experience conducting user research for physical products, ideally within hardware, health, or consumer product environments.
- 5+ years of people management experience, including coaching, feedback, and performance development.
- Strong mixed-methods research background, with demonstrated application of qualitative and quantitative approaches to real-world products.
- Experience working within or alongside hardware development lifecycles (not software-only).
- Experience managing or partnering with external research vendors, including project scoping and execution.
- Ability to manage multiple workstreams, navigate ambiguity, and influence without direct authority across cross-functional teams.
- Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate complex insights to executive audiences.
- Strong commitment to embracing and leveraging AI tools in day-to-day tasks, ensuring AI-assisted work aligns with the same high-quality standards as personal contributions.

*This role is based out of our Boston, MA headquarters and requires work onsite Monday-Friday.

Interested in the role, but don’t meet every qualification? We encourage you to still apply! At WHOOP, we believe there is much more to a candidate than what is written on paper, and we value character as much as experience. As we continue to build a diverse and inclusive environment, we encourage anyone who is interested in this role to apply.

WHOOP is an Equal Opportunity Employer and participates in E-verify to determine employment eligibility. It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

The WHOOP compensation philosophy is designed to attract, motivate, and retain exceptional talent by offering competitive base salaries, meaningful equity, and consistent pay practices that reflect our mission and core values. At WHOOP, we view total compensation as the combination of base salary, equity, and benefits, with equity serving as a key differentiator that aligns our employees with the long-term success of the company and allows every member of our corporate team to own part of WHOOP and share in the company’s long-term growth and success.

The U.S. base salary range for this full-time position is $140,000 - $180,000. Salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within each range, individual pay is based on factors such as job-related skills, experience, performance, and relevant education or training.

In addition to the base salary, the successful candidate will also receive benefits and a generous equity package.

These ranges may be modified in the future to reflect evolving market conditions and organizational needs. While most offers will typically fall toward the starting point of the range, total compensation will depend on the candidate’s specific qualifications, expertise, and alignment with the role’s requirements.

## About Whoop

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: WHOOP is a human performance optimization platform that uses a wearable device and 24/7 monitoring to help members improve sleep, strain, recovery, and overall health.
- **Entity Type**: Private (funding stage not publicly available in provided sources)
- **Headquarters**: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- **Founded**: 2012
- **Founders**: Will Ahmed

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Wearable health technology, human performance optimization
- **Target customers**: B2C (consumers, athletes) and B2B (professional sports teams, organizations)
- **Mission**: “To unlock human performance and Healthspan.” [whoop.com - About](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/about/)

## Products & Services
- **WHOOP 5.0 + Subscription**: A non-screen wrist-worn wearable with 14+ day battery life that continuously monitors sleep, strain, recovery, heart rate, heart rate variability, and 65+ biomarkers. The platform provides personalized coaching, blood pressure insights, women’s hormonal insights, VO₂ max, heart rate zones, and mental health tracking. Type: Hardware + SaaS subscription. [whoop.com - Homepage](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available from provided sources
- **Key Metric**: Not publicly available (annual revenue not disclosed); estimated headcount of 500 employees [Built In Boston](https://www.builtinboston.com/company/whoop)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not disclosed in provided sources
- **Growth Signals**: 500 total employees; hybrid workspace (4 days on-site per week); actively hiring across Engineering, AI/ML, Data & Analytics, Product, and Design; only 0.13% of applicants are hired, indicating high selectivity and strong talent demand. [whoop.com - Careers](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/careers/) | [Built In Boston](https://www.builtinboston.com/company/whoop)

## Competitive Advantages
- Proprietary 24/7 physiological monitoring with advanced sensor technology and an ultra-long battery life (14+ days)
- Deep scientific foundation – founded after reviewing over 500 medical papers
- Personalized coaching and insight delivery based on individual biometric data
- Strong brand recognition among elite athletes and mainstream consumers
- Privacy-first design with encrypted data storage [whoop.com - Homepage](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/)

## Strategic Focus
- Expanding health insights: introducing blood pressure monitoring, women’s hormonal health features, and heart health tracking
- Enhancing AI/ML capabilities (evident from many open AI/ML roles) [jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/whoop)
- Deepening enterprise/B2B partnerships with sports organizations and research institutions
- Continuing to build out Healthspan and longevity features

## Why Work Here
- **Hybrid workspace** – employees are on-site 4 days a week in Boston’s “best office” [whoop.com - Careers](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/careers/)
- **Benefits** – flexible time off, above-market compensation, paid parental leave, health support [whoop.com - Careers](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/careers/)
- **Employee Resource Groups** – ADAPT (disability inclusion), BLACK@WHOOP, LGBTQ+ (WHOOP GOOP), Veterans and Military Personnel, Women of WHOOP, Women in Science and Engineering, WHOOP Parents [whoop.com - Careers](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/careers/)
- **High selectivity** – only 0.13% of applicants are hired, reflecting a rigorous, standards-driven culture [whoop.com - Careers](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/careers/)
- **Equal Opportunity Employer** – committed to diversity and inclusion in all employment decisions [whoop.com - Careers](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/careers/)

## Sources
1. [whoop.com - Careers](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/careers/)
2. [whoop.com - About](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/about/)
3. [whoop.com - Homepage](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/)
4. [Built In Boston - WHOOP Office Profile](https://www.builtinboston.com/company/whoop)
5. [jobs.lever.co - WHOOP Job Listings](https://jobs.lever.co/whoop)

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