Lead User Researcher

Role Summary

We are seeking an experienced Lead User Researcher to lead user insight generation across a multi-stakeholder digital service. This role is pivotal in ensuring that service and product design decisions are grounded in evidence about real user needs, behaviours, and contexts. You will work in close collaboration with service designers, product managers, developers, and content designers to shape a user-centred service that is accessible, inclusive, and valuable to diverse user groups across both public and private sectors.

Key Responsibilities

1. Research Planning and Execution

• Design, manage, and deliver an end-to-end user research strategy across discovery, alpha, beta and live stages.
• Select appropriate research methodologies (e.g., contextual inquiry, depth interviews, usability testing, diary studies, surveys) based on stakeholder type and project phase.
• Conduct in-depth research sessions with a range of users including NHS Trust staff, procurement professionals, suppliers/manufacturers, regulators, and admin users.
• Lead inclusive research practices to engage participants with a range of access needs and digital competencies.

2. Analysis and Insight Synthesis

• Analyse qualitative and quantitative data to identify key user needs, pain points, behaviours, and workflows.
• Develop actionable user insights, prioritised by impact and mapped to service components.
• Build and maintain personas, needs statements, and journey narratives that evolve over time.
• Clearly document and present research findings through playbacks, slide decks, personas, and journey maps.

3. Collaboration and Influence

• Work closely with service designers and product leads to ensure user research shapes backlog prioritisation and design iteration.
• Collaborate with the technical team to validate hypotheses around usability, system flows, and data interactions.
• Act as an advocate for user-centred design in internal and external meetings, making the case for inclusive, evidence-based decision making.

4. Embedding Continuous Research

• Support the development of a rolling user research programme across product increments.
• Integrate research activities into the agile sprint rhythm and ensure insights are captured in tools such as Jira, Miro, and Confluence.
• Build reusable research assets such as interview guides, consent forms, and analysis templates to enable scaling and consistency.

5. Ethical and Inclusive Practice

• Ensure all research adheres to ethical and GDPR-compliant processes, including consent, anonymisation, and secure storage of data.
• Promote inclusive practices by involving users with a variety of lived experiences, disabilities, and technical environments.

Essential Skills and Experience

• Minimum 5 years’ experience in applied user research roles, with a strong track record in public sector or regulated environments.
• Demonstrated experience conducting user research with both internal organisational users and external stakeholder groups (e.g. suppliers, third-party vendors).
• Deep knowledge of user research techniques, particularly qualitative methods, and experience synthesising data into insights that influence product and service design.
• Strong experience collaborating in agile delivery teams and influencing prioritisation through user needs.
• Comfortable facilitating workshops, running user interviews remotely and in person, and communicating findings to a range of technical and non-technical audiences.

Desirable Experience

• Experience conducting research in the healthcare, NHS, life sciences or medical device sectors.
• Familiarity with tools such as Optimal Workshop, Lookback, Dovetail, Miro, or similar platforms.
• Experience working with GDS, NHS Digital or equivalent service standards, including user research for services subject to GDS assessments.
• Understanding of accessibility research methods, including working with users who rely on assistive technologies.
• Background or familiarity with research involving structured data systems, taxonomies, or regulatory platforms.

Certifications and Qualifications (Desirable)

• Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Design Research, or a related field.
• GDS or NHS Digital training on user research or service design (preferred).
• Relevant Agile or UCD certifications (e.g., UXQB Certified User Requirements Engineer, UX-PM).
• Awareness of or certification in Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) to support collaboration with technical cloud teams.

Key Attributes

• Empathetic listener who can uncover unspoken needs and behaviours.
• Structured thinker capable of identifying patterns in user behaviour and linking them to service design implications.
• Strong communicator with the ability to influence stakeholders through narrative and evidence.
• Passionate advocate for ethical, inclusive, and transparent research practices.