Senior User Researcher

Business Unit: Personal BankingSalary Range: £47,200 - £70,800 per annum DOE + Red hot benefits Location:  UK Remote - in person meet up once a quarter at one of our hubs (Newcastle / Glasgow / Edinburgh / London)Live to challenge the status quo. Live a life more Virgin.

Our Team

Our User Research Team is driven by a passion for understanding the core motivations of our users. We partner closely with the Content and Design teams to add context and data-driven insights to the human-centred design process. We dive deep into the minds of people. By observing and listening, we gain insights into their behaviours, preferences, and pain points.

Our team sits alongside Digital Design and Content Design within the Human-Centered Design Team. Day to day, you'll work in cross-functional squads. It's an exciting time for us, as we're now part of the Nationwide Group. We have big plans to do great things for our customers and we'd love you to join us.

Your research will help us create useful, usable, and delightful new products and features for people as well as continually innovating on our existing digital products and services.

What you'll be doing

• Responsible for creating and leading a program of research as part of a multi-disciplinary and diverse in-house Human-Centred Design Team.
• Coordinating user research-based customer understanding and empathy activities across multiple projects and initiatives.
• Taking the lead, plan, and conduct research activities to uncover user needs, meet business goals and design requirements.
• Managing the end-to-end usability testing process from planning, recruitment through to delivery of insights to stakeholders.
• Creating a communication strategy to deliver research findings and insights to the team, senior stakeholders and directors so that they share a deep understanding of users' needs and appreciate the design thinking process.
• Creating a variety of outputs and deliverables to communicate research findings and inform design strategy through end-to-end user journey evaluations.
• Leading on creating a set of Digital UX personas using our customer understanding Persona framework.
• Ensuring ethical research practices and procedures are adhered to across all user research activities within your scope.

We need you to have

• A number of years of work experience within Digital user experience and expertise of user centred design principles and technique, including knowledge of Inclusive design principles
• A degree qualified in psychology, behavioural sciences, Human Factors, HCI/Computer Science or other related UX / UCD / Service design fields or equivalent practical experience
• Demonstrable experience of applying a wide range of user research methods and of using remote user research platforms such as UserZoom, UserTesting.com or similar
• Experience of confidently facilitating of design thinking workshops
• Effective interpersonal, communication, and collaboration skills
• A working knowledge of tools like Jira, Confluence, Marvel, Miro, Microsoft Forms.

It's a bonus if you have but not essential

• Experience with Jira, Confluence and with Agile development process.
• Experience in leveraging quantitative data such as analytics and data science.
• Knowledge of the financial services industry and Consumer Duty.

Red Hot Rewards

• Generous holidays - 38.5 days annual leave (including bank holidays and prorated if Part–Time) plus the option to buy more.
• Up to five extra paid well-being days per year. 
• 20 weeks paid, gender-neutral family leave (52 weeks in total) for expectant parents and those looking to adopt. 
• Market-leading pension.
• Free private medical cover, income protection and life assurance.
• Flexible benefits include Cycle to Work, wellness and health assessments, and critical illness. 

And there's no waiting around, you'll enjoy these benefits from day one.

Feeling insatiably curious about this role? If we're lucky to receive a lot of interest, we may close the advert early and would hate you to miss out.

We're all about helping you Live a Life More Virgin, so happy to talk flexible working with you.

Say hello to Virgin MoneyWe're making great strides towards achieving our ambition of becoming the UK's best digital bank.  As a full-service digital bank with a heritage stretching back over 180 years, we're a workforce to be reckoned with, and we're putting the full power of our experience behind disruptive ideas that reinvent the role a bank plays in people's lives. We're customer-obsessed and work tirelessly to deliver on our purpose, ‘Making You Happier About Money.' This means we're able to do banking differently, and by innovating and working together we can make a real difference by creating memorable moments and red-hot experiences for our millions of customers. Join us and Live a Life More Virgin that empowers you with choice and flexibility in how you work. Be yourself at Virgin MoneyOur purpose is to make people happier about money, this means seeing and feeling the world as our customers do by creating a workforce that reflects the rich diversity of our customers and communities.  We're committed to creating an inclusive culture where colleagues feel safe and inspired to contribute, speak up and be heard.  

As a Disability Confident Leader, we're committed to removing any obstacles to inclusion.  If you need any reasonable adjustments or support making your application, contact our Talent Acquisition team

It's important to note that there may be occasions where it's not possible to interview all candidates declaring a disability who meet the essential criteria for the job. In certain recruitment situations such as receiving a high-volume of applications, we may need to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled and non-disabled applicants. 

Now the legal bitLiving A Life More Virgin allows our colleagues to be based anywhere in the UK (if the role allows it), but we'll need you to confirm you have the right to work in the UK.