User Researcher

**Details**:
**Reference number**:
194031

**Salary**:
£40,175 - £43,708

**Grade**:
Senior Executive Officer

**Contract type**:
Permanent

**Business area**:
HMRC - CDIO - Chief Technology and Design Officer

**Type of role**:
Digital
Information Technology

**Working pattern**:
Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

**Number of posts**:
1

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Location

Leeds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

About the job

**Summary**:
At HMRC we are committed to creating a great place to work for all our colleagues; an inclusive and respectful environment that reflects the diversity of the society we serve.

We want to maximise the potential of everyone who chooses to work for us and we offer a range of flexible working patterns and support to make a fulfilling career at HMRC accessible to you.

We’re making HMRC’s services and information simpler, clearer and faster for individuals and businesses. To do that, we are looking for User Researchers who are passionate about User Centred Design, supporting the work of our Policy Lab team.

HMRC’s Policy Lab has developed a strong reputation for helping policy makers shape some of HMRC’s biggest and most impactful policy changes since 2018, this includes shaping new taxes, helping our policy teams understand when something won’t work for customers or evolving existing policies to help make it easier for customers to meet their tax obligations.

This is an exciting time to join an organisation that probably doesn’t work how you’d imagine a government organisation would. HMRC’s Policy Lab truly enables you to have an impact at significant scale, directly influencing senior leaders and government officials with your evidence and design ideas.

Like to know more about what we do? Get in touch with Faye for a chat.

**Job description**:
Our aim is to help policy makers shape policy that makes it more achievable for people to meet their obligations and for government to maximise efficiency.

Our team works directly with policy specialists to help shape some of HMRC’s biggest and most ambitious or ground-breaking policy ideas, which lead to user centred public services.

Your role is to ensure that user needs are intrinsic to the design and implementation of our policies and services.

You will have the unique opportunity to work in HMRC’s Policy Lab, this will give you the opportunity to work on services that matter and affect the lives of millions of citizens.

You will join a lively and encouraging User Research community, with access to research labs and facilities across the UK.

We are passionate and committed, to conducting robust research with real-world impact, and bring varied expertise from the private, voluntary, and public sectors.

**Responsibilities**:

- Planning, designing, preparing and executing a range of user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of government policies and services.
- Identifying the appropriate research method depending on the phase of the service lifecycle, such as ethnographic research methods, usability testing and A/B tests.
- Working closely with a multidisciplinary agile scrum team who are passionate about their work, and ensure research has a significant contribution to the delivery of our services.
- Leading colleagues to analyse research data and synthesise clear and actionable findings, including working closely with analytics colleagues to create a rich picture of user behaviour.
- Communicating user research findings to help the team and wider organisation develop a deep understanding of users and their needs.
- Ensure research plans take all ethical considerations into account and appropriate mitigating actions are in place.
- Contributing to the wider user research community including presenting at meetups and writing blog posts.
- Mentoring and/or managing junior user researchers.

**Essential criteria**

You should demonstrate proven knowledge and experience of:

- Using a range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies including ethnographic techniques, usability testing, remote testing, and survey design to identify user needs.
- Solving and aligning user research activities to inform decision making and action.
- Conducting user research projects with demonstrated impact on the final user experience.
- Synthesising multiple inputs (reporting data, metrics, qualitative and quantitative insights) to generate actionable and implementable recommendations.
- Involving key partners in analysis and synthesis to increase consensus and challenge assumptions.
- Presenting clear findings to demonstrate the impact of the research.

**It’s desirable that you have**:

- Experience of working in agile teams and an understanding of agile approaches.
- Knowledge of current technologies used to build and operate digital services, and the different technical roles in a digital team.
- Understanding of the GDS Service Manual & Government Digital Standard.
- A degree in psy