User Researcher in London

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations, globally recognised for its authority, integrity and accuracy, with a mission to deliver quality information and services worldwide. At the FT, curiosity thrives and ambitious thinking is rewarded. Here, you’re given the chance to reach millions, create work that matters and deliver impartial journalism in a polarised world. In our warm, collaborative culture, you’ll connect with a diverse community of experts who support your growth, career aspirations and wellbeing. Your future at the FT will be filled with opportunities that challenge and inspire you. With no fixed path, you’ll discover new skills and forge a career that can take you anywhere.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

The Role

We’re looking for a User Researcher to join the Product Design & User Research team in our London Office. You’ll be working on our Experience team using a wide range of research methods to help us get a deeper understanding of our audiences. You’ll work alongside three fully empowered squads of designers, product managers, engineers and the Newsroom with support from and access to relevant stakeholders from around the FT such as data and marketing. You’ll help deliver end‑to‑end product experiences, from exploratory research into opportunity definition, from ideation into concepting, from testing into shipping, measuring and iterating. You’ll receive regular guidance and support from your squads, your line manager, our Director of Product Research & Design, and of course the whole research team. We work hard to foster a safe environment where we share and discuss our work proactively, to inspire, support and guide each other.

Key Responsibilities

• Planning and prioritising: You'll have an equal stake in your cross functional teams direction, working together to plan and prioritise initiatives based on company OKRs.
• Collaborating with product managers, designers, engineers etc through all stages of the discovery and development process to create a shared understanding of customer needs.
• Researching and learning about users: Designing, planning and conducting relevant generative research activities suited for the objectives and the timelines of the team. Uncovering the behaviours and motivations of customers, using relevant methodologies.
• Empathy and experience mapping: Understanding user mindsets, motivations and expectations. Mapping experiences, journeys and flows, to help us unearth and prioritise pain points and opportunities.
• Ideating, iterating and testing: Working with teams to help evolve ideas into concepts, to shape these concepts with research and iterate based on the learnings.
• Synthesising learnings and sharing insights creatively: Taking what you've learnt and disseminating knowledge throughout your squad and the business.
• Evolving: We strive to continually improve. Evolving our process by adding new techniques and abandoning obsolete ones.

Required Skills and Experience

• Shipped multiple features and iterations across several products.
• Been a user researcher for product teams for 3 years or more.
• Proven research skills, experience of using a range of methods to deliver insights that impact product strategy and direction.
• Clear communication and presentation skills, able to tell a compelling customer narrative with qualitative and quantitative results.
• Good initiative to solve problems, manage workload and set expectations.
• Strong collaboration skills, knowing how to contribute and influence through finding common ground and building rapport with team members.
• Natural curiosity, a desire to understand how and why people use digital products and how the FT can best meet their needs.

Career progression and growth

We have a transparent, measurable progression framework, which will outline all of the skills FT user researchers need, and detail on how to progress in each skill category. We will use this as a basis for your biannual reviews, where you’ll self assess against the progression framework, track progression, and agree areas of focus with your line manager. We invest in our people to allow them to grow both personally and professionally whilst working at The FT.

What’s in it for You?

Our benefits vary by location but we are committed to providing best‑in‑class perks across all our offices. These include generous annual leave, medical cover, inclusive parental leave packages, subsidised gym memberships and opportunities to give back to the community. We currently operate a hybrid model which requires staff to work onsite 50% of the time, subject to role requirements & regular review. While flexible working requests will be considered, not all patterns are suitable for all roles. We believe this balanced approach supports flexibility and protects our culture, making collaboration and communication easier, building stronger relationships and team cohesion, and supporting peer learning.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory. Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email and a member of our team will be happy to help.