Senior User Researcher

**Details**:
**Reference number**:

- 340844**Salary**:

- £57,000 - £67,100-
**Job grade**:

- Grade 7**Contract type**:

- Permanent**Business area**:

- HO - Digital Data and Technology - User Centred Design**Type of role**:

- Digital
- Information Technology
- Policy**Working pattern**:

- Flexible working, Full-time, Part-time, Compressed hours**Number of jobs available**:

- 1Contents

Location

About the job

**Benefits**:
Things you need to know

Location
- Croydon, Manchester, SheffieldAbout the job

**Job summary**:
We’re looking for** **a** Senior User Researcher **who wants to make a lasting impact on how the Home Office delivers user-centred policies and services. We’re looking for a skilled and experienced Senior User Researcher who is passionate about what they can bring to delivering better services at the Home Office and prepared to be a vocal advocate for user needs.

We’re looking for a Senior User Researcher to join our Policy and Innovation Lab (‘CoLab’) to help us deliver impactful and meaningful projects in Migration and Borders. Our mission is to bring user-centred and explorative design approaches to policy making at the Home Office.

We are a creative team of designers and researchers working closely with policy and operations teams from across the Home Office, to put users at the centre of our policy making processes. Our work builds a deep understanding of the challenges being faced by our users, so that we can rapidly design and test novel solutions to de-risk policy decisions and improve outcomes.

We work in policy spaces that require a deeper understanding of service users. These might be projects like exploring how we can better support survivors of modern slavery, or how we might help refugees to better integrate and adapt to life in the UK.

You’ll communicate insights from research in engaging and impactful ways to delivery teams and stakeholders to drive change and improve government services.

You can learn more about design and research in the Home Office on our blog:

- How does CoLab help the Home Office solve problems?
- Establishing the Home Office User Research Ethics Board
- Using ‘cooperative usability testing’ with our expert users
- Psychological safety for researchers

This is an exciting time to be at the Home Office. You’ll have a chance to shape the future and support our mission to deliver exceptional public services that work for everyone.

**Job description**:
**Responsibilities**

Your main day-to-day responsibilities will include:

- Planning and leading user research to understand user needs and behaviours and inform the design and development of government policies and services
- Facilitating activities that help stakeholders to understand the problem space and assess the implication of policy decisions
- Influencing how decisions are made and constructively challenging ways of thinking at both the team and senior stakeholder level
- Leading other user researchers within the team, mentoring and up-skilling researchers and supporting the growth and development of the team
- Taking a user-centred, evidence-based approach by turning user research findings into actionable insights that influence policy development
- Sharing insights from research and examples of best practice where they can help other researchers across the Home Office

You will also be expected to carry out the following day to day activities:

- Presenting research findings and related recommendations to senior decision makers across government
- Identifying, mitigating or escalating risks to conducting and implementing research
- Helping to shape how the Policy and Innovation Lab operates, including the culture, methods, tools and standards

Where business needs allow, some roles may be suitable for a combination of office and home-based working. This is a non-contractual arrangement where employees will be expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in the office. Applicants can request further information regarding how this may work in their team from the Vacancy Holder (see advert for contact details).

**Person specification**:
**Essential Skills**

You’ll have a demonstrable passion for user-centred design, with the following skills or some experience in:

- Communicating insights from research in a clear and impactful way that drives change in the design of services and informs policy and proposition
- Establishing an effective user centred design culture in a team, and supporting them to embed user centred design practices into policy development processes
- Convincing senior stakeholders about the benefits of adopting a user-centred approach, based on evidence
- Researching diverse audiences to help teams deliver policies and services that work for all

Our skills align with the cross government DDaT Capability Framework

**Benefits**:

- **You’ll be set-up for hybrid working from day one**
We provide you with Office 365 licence as well a