Lead User Researcher

Location Manchester
Discipline: Retail Banking
Job type: Permanent
Contact name: Zoe Gilbert

Contact email: careers@co-operativebank.co.uk
Job ref: 010823
Published: almost 2 years ago

Lead User Researcher

Salary – Up to £55,000

Full time: 35 hours

Location: Remote working/Manchester office base (Lab room located at Head Office, Manchester)

 
 

It’s an exciting time to join the Retail UX team. We have created a strong culture, employing the best people to help shape our UX team into a leader in the industry. We’ve got big plans and we need the right people in the team to help us drive the team forward and support the Retail Bank to always take a user centric approach to decision making. We’re looking for people with a can do attitude, a drive to push the UX team forwards and experience they are happy to share with the rest of the team. We love learning and we value having a team of colleagues who are so passionate about the UX discipline.

 

What will this role involve?  

 

*       Being proactive, working closely with UX colleagues, the Digital team and stakeholders from across the business to generate hypotheses and plans for high-impact research that helps us better understand our existing and potential customers

*       Lead the UX research team for the Retail Bank, including line management of Senior User Researcher

*       Suggest the best approach and methods to use so we’re capturing the right insights that help us grow and develop our digital products and services

*       Working with Head of UX to manage sprint planning for the Research team, balancing BAU with long term strategic Research projects which supports to shape our Digital roadmap

*       Working across all scrum teams including the mobile app, public website and online banking scrum

*       Design and run discovery research to develop a deep understanding of user needs. Plan and run qualitative studies and moderated testing, including field observations and interviews, concept testing, competitor analysis, usability studies and organise face to face studies in our research lab

*       Forward thinking, looking ahead at the Digital and Product roadmap, identifying opportunities for where research can help to inform roadmap decisions

*       Experienced with using third party tools (Userzoom, Pulse or equivalent) to complete research, able to suggest and recommend other tools we should be using to further improve our Research capabilities

*       Collaborate closely with our analytics team to make sure our qualitative insights are also enhanced by robust quantitative analysis whenever possible, and run basic quantitive analysis yourself

*       Mentor and train UX teams to run their own lightweight research, freeing you up to do the high-impact work

*       Communicate research findings to inform business decisions through the best possible means ranging from presentations, workshops or reports

*       Managing and optimising the Research roadmap to grow the research function and ensure we are gathering as much user research as possible from as many different avenues as you think appropriate

 

Knowledge, Skills and Experience Required:

 

*       You’ve got lots of hands-on experience with exploratory and evaluative qualitative research methods, appreciating their limitations and when to apply them appropriately

*       You can run user testing with your eyes closed, regardless of the setting. You should be comfortable in a lab as well as stopping people in the street for quick feedback or setting up remote tests

*       You are flexible in your approach and embrace a challenge; you might need to come up with new ways of answering research questions quickly and communicating the results in a memorable, impactful way

*       You've worked in an environment before where you've lead the research and made demonstrable impact on the direction of the product or service

*       You’re a strong communicator and facilitator. You’re able to tell a story so your audience will want to listen to and zoom into detail when needed to help solutions come to life

*       You’re familiar with quantitative research and understand how user research helps shape metrics and drive teams towards success

*       Proven experience of mentoring or management, you know how to get the best out of people and can help empower them to succeed  

*       Ability to impact assess workload and manage delivery expectations and deadlines appropriately 

 
 

What can you expect from us?

*       Flexible and remote working

*       27 days holiday (going up by 1 each year up to 30), plus opportunity to buy 5 extra days

  • Competitive pension / income protection / life assurance

  • Commitment from employers on continued learning & development 

  • Wellbeing support ‘Help@Hand’ offers mental health support, physiotherapy, GP’s for both you and your family.  

  • 2 paid days for volunteering per year

  • ‘MyReward’ corporate discount for over 800 retailers and Cycle to Work Scheme.