User Researcher (SC Eligible)

User Researcher - Public Sector Digital Transformation

Location: UK (Hybrid, with potential travel to client sites)

Type: Permanent

Salary: £45,000 - £55,000 + Benefits

Clearance: SC clearance or eligibility required

Help shape user-centred public services used by millions.

We're hiring a User Researcher to join digital transformation programmes across the UK public sector. You'll work closely with designers, product managers, delivery teams and technical specialists to understand user needs, shape better services, and ensure digital products are inclusive, intuitive and effective.

This is an opportunity to apply user-centred design at scale, solving real problems for citizens, frontline workers and communities.

The Role

As a User Researcher, you'll plan and conduct research that uncovers deep insights into user behaviours, contexts and pain points. You'll turn that insight into clear, actionable recommendations that influence service design, product decisions and wider transformation efforts.

You'll work as part of a multidisciplinary team, championing evidence-based decision-making and ensuring the outcomes genuinely meet user and organisational needs.

What You'll Be Doing

• Planning, designing and delivering user research across digital services
• Conducting user interviews, contextual research, usability testing, surveys and workshops
• Collaborating with product managers, service designers, UX designers and engineers
• Producing personas, journey maps, insight reports and clear recommendations
• Presenting research findings to stakeholders in an engaging, accessible way
• Ensuring research activities follow ethical, accessibility and inclusion standards
• Supporting early-stage discovery and problem-definition work
• Advocating for UCD practices within teams and helping others understand user needs
• Contributing to iterative design and continuous service improvement

What We're Looking For

Essential

• Previous or current public sector and/or consultancy experience.
• Strong experience conducting user research for digital services or products
• Ability to use a wide range of research methods and choose the right approach for each stage
• Confidence planning research in complex environments with varied user groups
• Clear written and verbal communication skills - able to explain insights to non-researchers
• Experience working as part of a multidisciplinary delivery team
• Ability to produce high-quality research artefacts (insight reports, personas, maps, flows)
• Strong understanding of accessibility, inclusion and ethical research considerations

Desirable

• Experience working with public sector organisations or aligning to GDS service standards
• Knowledge of service design and the wider UCD toolkit
• Experience running workshops or facilitating research sessions
• Familiarity with agile delivery environments
• Ability to adapt research for harder-to-reach or constrained user groups

Who This Role Suits

You'll thrive here if you:

• Enjoy solving real problems that directly improve people's lives
• Are passionate about inclusive and ethical research
• Like collaborating with multidisciplinary teams
• Are comfortable navigating ambiguity and shaping direction through insight
• Want to contribute to meaningful public sector transformation

Why Join

This organisation is rooted in people-powered transformation, working with public sector partners to deliver accessible, sustainable and user-centred digital services. You'll join a collaborative UCD community that values inclusion, learning and open working.

Benefits typically include:

• Flexible hybrid working
• Generous holiday allowance
• Professional development budget
• Volunteer days
• Wellbeing and healthcare support
• Pension and employee benefits scheme

Interested?

If you're a User Researcher who's passionate about improving digital public services and creating real impact for people and communities, we'd love to hear from you.

Reasonable Adjustments:

Respect and equality are core values to us. We are proud of the diverse and inclusive community we have built, and we welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and perspectives. Our success is driven by our people, united by the spirit of partnership to deliver the best resourcing solutions for our clients.

If you need any help or adjustments during the recruitment process for any reason, please let us know when you apply or talk to the recruiters directly so we can support you.