Senior User Researcher

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

- 433104

**Salary**:

- £54,531
- A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

GBP

**Job grade**:

- Grade 7

**Contract type**:

- Permanent

**Type of role**:

- Digital

**Working pattern**:

- Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

**Number of jobs available**:

- 3

**Contents**:

- Location
- About the job
- Benefits
- Things you need to know

**Location**:

- Bristol, Darlington, London, Manchester, Wolverhampton

**About the job**:
**Job summary**:

- Here at the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG), we work on things that make a real difference to people’s lives. Whether it's through the homes we live in, the work of our local councils, or the communities we’re all part of, our work is at the top of the political agenda. We have ambitious and far-reaching outcomes to achieve this year and, if you’re thinking of joining us, there’s never been a more exciting time. We have over 3,500 staff who are based in 20 offices across the UK.

There are exciting opportunities in multiple teams, including our Funding Service, which helps grant teams deliver funding quickly and consistently, saving time and money; our Digital Engagement and Assurance team which is helping transform internal processes into user-centred, high-performing and responsive services; and the Private Rented sector division who are also leading on a systematic programme of reform.

As a Senior User Researcher, you will be a key figure in your team. You’ll build an in-depth understanding of the users of your service, representing their voice and using user-centred design to help the team design and deliver a dramatically improved service at lower cost and risk, while continuously improve services, based on data and evidence.

Find out more about what it's like to work in a digital, data and technology role at MHCLG including our culture, ways of working, career progression and staff benefits. You can also read the MHCLG Digital blog to learn about the work we're doing.

**Job description**:
As a Senior User Researcher, you'll:

- Plan, prepare and carry out a range of user research activities to support the design and improvement of complex services
- Lead colleagues to analyse research data and synthesise clear and actionable findings
- Share findings to help people understand users and their needs
- Work closely with colleagues to turn user research findings into action
- Include all kinds of users in research to help teams understand the diversity of users
- Champion users and their experience
- Supervise and develop other user researchers to assure and improve research practice, including potentially line managing other user researchers or User-Centred Design professionals

**Person specification**:
As a Senior User Researcher, you'll have:

- Significant experience of planning, preparing, and carrying out different user research activities for services with complex journeys in a collaborative agile team environment;
- Demonstrable knowledge of user research practice and of deploying a wide range of user research methods effectively to generate clear and valuable findings
- The ability to understand the complex problems a team is trying to solve, and align user research activities to inform decision making and action
- Experience of advocating for user research, particularly in large-scale complex organisations and sharing finds widely to help people understand users and their needs
- Experience of advocating for inclusive practices, and including all kinds of users in appropriate research activities to help teams understand the diversity of people who use their services
- Experience of building User Centred Design practices in a team and leading other user-centred design professionals

**Benefits**:

- Alongside your salary of £54,531, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government contributes £15,797 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
- Learning and development tailored to your role
- An environment with flexible working options
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
- A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%

**Things you need to know**:
**Selection process details**:
MHCLG want to bring in a diverse workforce at all levels.

Most of our campaigns utilise multiple assessors and so it is possible that each of your answers would be viewed by different assessors.
- The assessor won’t be reading your answers sequentially.
- Do not assume that the same assessors will have read all of your answers.
- If talking about something in your first answer, make sure that you write the second answer as if you had not written the first (and so on)

**CV Declaration**

We recruit based on your knowledge and skills, and not background, gender or ethnicity - this is called anonymous recruitment.

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