At a Glance
- Tasks: Plan and execute user research to understand user needs and behaviours.
- Company: Join a 'Times Best Places to Work 2026' company with a focus on user-centred design.
- Benefits: Competitive day rate, flexible working, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Other info: Work in a dynamic team, contributing to innovative digital services.
- Why this job: Make a real impact by shaping services and products based on user insights.
- Qualifications: 3-5 years in user research, strong communication skills, and experience in Agile environments.
A 'Times Best Places to Work 2026' Company.
As a User Researcher, you will be responsible for planning and executing a broad range of user research activities to help the team understand user needs and behaviours. You will gather data to identify core user groups and the user journey, turning insights into actions that shape the design of services and products. You will identify user pain points and needs at all points of a project. You will work with a degree of autonomy, guiding the choice of research methods and ensuring the development lifecycle is user-centred. The role supports the delivery of user-centred, accessible, secure and effective digital services, aligned to the Government Service Standard and organisational delivery frameworks.
User Research Practice
You will plan, design and conduct qualitative and quantitative user research across the service lifecycle (discovery, alpha, beta, live). You will select and apply appropriate research methods (e.g. interviews, usability testing, contextual inquiry, surveys, diary studies). You will recruit, screen, and vet research participants to ensure they are appropriate for the research objectives, including assessing suitability, managing ethical considerations, and ensuring representative participation. You will conduct research with difficult-to-reach users, adapting methods for poor or unreliable connectivity, accessibility needs, and other contextual constraints. You will synthesise findings into clear, actionable insights that inform service design and delivery decisions, maintain research repositories, and ensure findings are reusable and accessible.
Digital Service Delivery
You will work closely with product managers, designers, developers and delivery managers to embed user research into agile delivery. You will contribute evidence to prioritisation decisions, backlog refinement, and design iterations, supporting continuous improvement of live services through ongoing research and feedback loops. You will ensure services meet Government Service Standard principles, particularly around user needs and accessibility.
Stakeholder Engagement
Communication is an important part of this role. You will effectively communicate research plans, findings and recommendations to a range of stakeholders. You will facilitate research playback sessions and workshops to build shared understanding of user needs, advising teams and stakeholders on user-centred approaches and best practice.
Governance, Ethics and Quality
You must ensure research is conducted ethically, securely and in line with organisational and government policies; applying accessibility, inclusion and data protection standards (e.g. WCAG, GDPR). You will contribute to the development and improvement of user research standards, tools and templates.
Top requirements for this role
- Someone who is evidence-led and user-focused
- Someone who is collaborative and adaptable
- Must be comfortable working in fast-paced, iterative delivery environments
Experience and skills
Must haves:
- Minimum 3–5 years of experience in a dedicated user research role, ideally within an Agile environment.
- Proven experience in both generative (discovery) and evaluative (testing) research methods.
- Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to advocate for the user to non-researchers.
- Experience facilitating workshops or collaborative analysis sessions with stakeholders.
- Ability to source and secure research tools to enable expediting research analysis and synthesis.
- Collaborative, personable and a good visual, literal and verbal communicator.
- Recruiting and engaging research participants.
- Capturing, challenging, distilling and presenting user needs to inform and assess potential options.
- Proficient at conducting virtual interviews.
- Developing research artefacts such as personas and user journey maps.
Nice to have:
- Proficiency in research tools.
- Familiarity with the GDS Service Standard or similar public/private sector design frameworks.
- Experience working in secure environments (e.g., MOD).
Additional information
- DDaT description: User Researcher • SFIA Level: 5
- Start date: 1 August 2026 • Initial contract length: 3 months
- Role location: Portsmouth
- Nationality specification: British Citizen only, no dual nationality
- Number of days per week expected on site: 3+ per week (depending on need)
- Minimum security level: SC or above
- Day rate: £504
- Outside IR35
