Fall 2023 - UX Research Intern - 90361164

Your success is a train ride away!

As we move America’s workforce toward the future, Amtrak connects businesses and communities across the country. We employ more than 20,000 diverse, energetic professionals in a variety of career fields throughout the United States. The safety of our passengers, our employees, the public and our operating environment is our priority, and the success of our railroad is due to our employees.

Are you ready to join our team?

Our values of ‘Do the Right Thing, Excel Together and Put Customers First’ are at the heart of what matters most to us, and our Core Capabilities, ‘Building Trust, Accountability, Effective Communication, Customer Focus, and Proactive Safety & Security’ are what every employee needs to know and do to be most impactful at Amtrak. By living the Amtrak values, focusing on our capabilities, and actively embracing and fostering diverse ideas, backgrounds, and perspectives, together we will honor our past and make Amtrak a company of the future.

POSITION SUMMARY:

As a User Experience Research Intern, you’ll report to the Principal UX Researcher as a member of the innovation team residing within the Digital Technology department.

You are an endlessly curious knowledge seeker willing to go broad or dig deep. Your insights will empower teams to deliver differentiated and rewarding experiences. You understand and champion the importance of research to the design process and act as an active member of the user experience team.

You will work with other user experience practitioners, futures thinkers, and technologists to envision and craft experiences that ultimately lead to the transformation of public transportation in the U.S. This entails creating frameworks and strategies that guide our future products, platforms and services that can scale across our nation-wide network. Innovation efforts may range from designing a digitally enhanced on-train dining experience to envisioning the train station of the future.

Your work will involve utilizing a variety of approaches to better understand our users (customers and Amtrak employees) and landscape - some days you may be at your desk digging through reports, other days you may be conducting interviews or helping to moderate design thinking workshops. You will help identify which methodologies should be used to test new concepts, and analyze results to identify a clear path forward. At each stage of the process, you will synthesize and transform to create meaningful outputs that will help guide and support a variety of teams across Amtrak.

Key to your success will be an endless curiosity, the ability to effectively collaborate, and a relentless drive to re-imagine the future of passenger rail.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Effectively collaborate on cross-functional teams including service designers, UX designers, data scientists, and contributors from teams across the company
• Use a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies (e.g. interviewing, surveys) to uncover existing issues, identify opportunities, and build a clear picture of our users’ needs, expectations, motivations, pains, and obstacles.
• Conduct foundational research, develop hypotheses, and work with a team to build appropriate project plans and identify key outputs for new concept and scenario testing.
• Clearly and effectively plan and document research activities; create cohesive reports that build shared understanding with a compelling story
• Support the planning and facilitation of co-creation workshops that bring together customers, community members, and/or stakeholders to drive the analysis of current services and the design of improved services and new solutions
• Be an Amtrak ambassador, attending and helping to plan studio and community events, workshops, and conferences

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:

• Must be actively pursuing a degree at an accredited educational institution.
• Must be actively pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors, Usability Engineering, Psychology, Behavioral Science, Sociology, Information Science, Product Design,or a related technical field.
• Must have at least 2 years of academic undergraduate studies completed or a junior status at minimum.
• Must have a cumulative GPA of 2.8 or higher
• Familiarity with a wide range of quantitative and qualitative user research methods and the strengths and weaknesses or each.
• Experience with planning, designing, facilitating, and synthesizing different types of user research activities
• Experience with requirements gathering and communication between design teams, workstreams and clients
• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Strong attention to detail and ability to partner with stakeholders
• A self-starter with an entrepreneurial spirit

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Experience testing a wide range of physical and digital products, services, and experiences
• Experience with planning, designing, facilitating, and synthesizing workshops
• Familiarity with rapid prototyping methods, ranging from paper sketching to digital prototypes
• Experience with creating service design outputs including service blueprints, journey maps, ecosystem maps, personas, storyboards, and process flows
• Strong experience using a variety of methods to communicate findings and proposals, including presentations, prototypes, storyboards, and visual frameworks
• Ability to communicate the big picture to decision makers and the complex details to technical and subject matter experts
• Experience strategically incorporating research into the innovation process

COMMUNICATION AND INTERPERSONAL SKILLS:
Must have excellent oral and written communication skills

The hourly range is $17.50 per hour - $35.00 per hour. Pay is based on factors including school year, program of study, etc. In addition paid internships include Amtrak rail pass privileges as a part of the experience along with one (1) PTO day per academic year.

Please be advised that the Fall 2023 internship program will run from September 18th - April 26th (full academic year).

Requisition ID:159085
Posting Location(s):N/A
Job Family/Function:Information Technology
Relocation Offered:No
Travel Requirements:None

You power our progress through your performance.

We want your work at Amtrak to be more than a job. We want your career at Amtrak to be a fulfilling experience where you find challenging work, rewarding opportunities, respect among colleagues, and attractive compensation. Amtrak maintains a culture that values high performance and recognizes individual employee contributions.

Amtrak is committed to a safe workplace free of drugs and alcohol. All Amtrak positions requires a pre-employment background check that includes prior employment verification, a criminal history check and a pre-employment drug screen.

Candidates who test positive for marijuana will be disqualified, regardless of any state or local statute, ordinance, regulation, or other law that legalizes or decriminalizes the use or possession of marijuana, whether for medical, recreational, or other use. Amtrak's pre-employment drug testing program is administered in accordance with DOT regulations and applicable law.

In accordance with DOT regulations (49 CFR § 40.25), Amtrak is required to obtain prior drug and alcohol testing records for applicants/employees intending to perform safety-sensitive duties for covered Department of Transportation positions. If an applicant/employee refuses to provide written consent for Amtrak to obtain these records, the individual will not be permitted to perform safety-sensitive functions.

In accordance with federal law governing security checks of covered individuals for providers of public transportation (Title 6 U.S.C. §1143), Amtrak is required to screen applicants for any permanent or interim disqualifying criminal offenses.

Note that any education requirement listed above may be deemed satisfied if you have an equivalent combination of education, training and experience.

Amtrak is an EOE/Affirmative Action Minority/Female employer, and we welcome all to apply. We consider candidates regardless of race/color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions), national origin/ethnicity, age, disability (intellectual, mental and physical), veteran status, marital status, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, genetic information, citizenship or any other personal characteristics protected by law.