EV Charging User Experience Sr. Principal Researcher Job at American Honda Motor

Job Purpose

Developing and executing product and business strategy in a world of rapid technological and social change requires a highly capable, highly knowledgeable, and highly engaged team. American Honda’s Sustainability & Business Development business unit is tasked with navigating the business and technology application path for Honda's future renewable energy, resource circulation and innovative business initiative products, services, and businesses. Our focus is to establish an ecosystem of hardware, software, and renewable energy that achieves these goals by focusing on real-world user experience. By providing solutions to users that are intuitive, generate value for users in terms of time savings, money savings, and enriching their lives we can expand and deepen our relationship with each customer. The team will focus on building and sustaining Honda's core brand values and enhancing brand image and competitiveness in the marketplace by innovating, incubating, selecting, developing, applying, and operating new businesses, features, products, and services with responsibility for their profitability, competitiveness, and customer satisfaction for Honda in North America. 

Focusing on future EV charging and energy business, as well providing new value to the Customer, the Dealer, and AHM (in that order), the associate leads strategy & research initiatives and product & policy investigations, supports tasked plans, executes, and reports on all planning and business aspects of the charging and energy business. This requires frequent coordination and review of wide-ranging information, along with regular communication with external business partners providers, HM, Product Planning, Service, Quality, Sales, Finance, AHM Law & IP, and other pertinent business units.

This position will focus on business strategy to address customer charging needs that will define future EV Charging and Energy solutions in the market. This role informs and is accountable for the technical competence of the strategies that are developed.

Key Accountabilities

• Design research and provide insights for new and improved products and services to enable more seamless charging experience and expansion of energy products. 
• Lead research ideas and design studies that support product concepts, customer experience design and strategic initiatives
• Business Strategy Development: Identify new potential markets and business opportunities, develop hypotheses for development team to pursue through POC activity in an agile framework for speed and rapid iterative learning, embracing fail early/fail often principles, and documenting learnings and user needs to contribute to future business development efforts. 
• Work closely with various stakeholders in charging industry to develop products and services to enable more seamless charging experience. This involves analyzing existing user experiences, identifying areas of improvement, designing new experiences, and refining existing ones. 
• Communication: Act as a liaison with external research organizations and resources to perform market sensing.  Synthesize the learnings and communicate broadly with management and throughout the company.

Qualifications, Experience, and Skills

• Master’s degree in Business or a quantitative field (e.g., Economics, Consumer Research, Mathematics, etc.) with 5 years of market/consumer research experience OR a Bachelor’s degree with 7 years of relevant experience.
• 7+ years of experience (with a Bachelor's degree) in data, research, and analytical program solving, preferably in automotive or consumer goods companies. 5+ years’ experience with post-graduate degree. 
• 5+ years of experience in identifying key business drivers and developing consumer research and benchmarking programs that provide insights to support charging and energy business development.
• 3+ years of experience in developing financial and business models, financial forecasts, negotiating business terms and conditions, contracts, and business administration.
• Experience in using data insights to influence business stakeholders and communicate complex analysis to non-technical audiences.
• Be able to frame hypothesis, create meaningful metrics, and define analytic approach.
• Demonstrates clear communication and presentation skills (oral and written).
• High degree of negotiation & compromise.

Working Conditions

• Hybrid environment with 40% in office 
• Long hours and schedule flexibility is required
• Frequent meetings of 1 – 2 hours duration
• Regular conference calls and video conferences
• Frequent working outside of normal business hours, particularly late evenings for meetings with other time zones (e.g., US Eastern time, Japan, early morning for Europe) 
• Preparation of proposals for executive approval are frequent and often required on short timelines
• Expectations are very high
• Travel up to 25% (Domestic and International)
• Requires the frequent and routine handling of highly confidential company long term strategies for growth and compliance