Lead User Researcher (i.AI)
| Posting date: | 08 May 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £67,126 to £83,027 per year |
| Additional salary information: | National pay: £67,126 - £71,795. London pay: £71,370 - £77,813. Offers above the band minimum are subject to our assessment of your skills and experience as demonstrated at interview. Salaries over the band minimum will be paid as a non-pensionable allowa |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 25 May 2025 |
| Location: | Bristol |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 403976/1 |
Summary
Government must seize the opportunity of AI to drive outcomes in the public interest. This is of critical importance now. Government needs innovation and must not sleep on the opportunity presented by AI to drive better services for taxpayers and citizens.
In November 2023, the creation of the incubator for AI (i.AI) was announced, and following early successes, the team was expanded in March 2024. Our mission is to harness the opportunity of AI to improve lives, drive growth, and deliver better public services. This is an AI product team that focuses on delivery of technical solutions to public service challenges, responding to ministerial steers about priorities and driving impact out into departments from the centre.
i.AI delivers high impact products and is mission-led, delivering value and innovation within government. We are able to move fast and build things, and are set up specifically to pivot quickly towards priority use cases, and re-use technologies for future impact.
You can see more about our work on ai.gov.uk and on LinkedIn. We work in the open and our code can be found here: https://github.com/i-dot-ai
The Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI) will be moving to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to form part of the new digital centre of government. This will happen on 1st June 2025. If offered the position, you will be on-boarded directly into DSIT. If shortlisted, the hiring panel will be happy to answer any questions you might have. You're also welcome to reach out to us at i-dot-ai-recruitment@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Our team is based across Bristol, Manchester and London, and we work in a hybrid manner as default. A minimum 60% of your working time should be spent at your principal workplace, although requirements to attend other locations for official business will also count towards this level of attendance. We will consider part-time and flexible working arrangements - we encourage you to discuss your needs with the hiring manager if you are offered the role.
About the role
User Researchers help us develop a deep understanding of the people - citizens, businesses or government colleagues - who use our products and services. Their findings allow our teams to design and build better products at lower cost and risk, and to continuously improve them based on data and evidence.
As a Lead User Researcher you will lead and align user research activities across several teams. You will ensure that teams take a user centred, evidence based approach to service design and delivery. You will develop user research capability and assure good user research practice.
You will work across one or more of our multi-disciplinary product teams, supporting a small team of Senior User Researchers. Each team works on a different application of AI to a government problem space. The goal is to quickly establish whether there’s potential value, by delivering a working product to users and measuring impact.
i.AI is an incubator, which means our product teams tend to be small, nimble and optimised for learning fast, so you need to be flexible and passionate about getting things done.
Information session
To give you an idea of working in i.AI and to answer any questions you might have, we encourage you to attend our information session on Thursday 22 May, 11:00-12:00. You can join the session using this link: meet.google.com/tch-agev-onq
Role Responsibilities
- Leading user researchers and user research activities across several teams.
- Aligning user research plans and activities with organisational objectives and priorities.
- Contributing evidence from user research to inform service propositions and roadmaps.
- Promoting and assuring good user research practice.
- Developing and mentoring user researchers.
- Working with colleagues to create a culture of user centred and evidence based service design and delivery with teams actively involved in user research
- Working with colleagues to integrate user research activities and findings into teams’ agile workflow.
- Engaging with colleagues across the organisation and across government to collaborate on user research and share relevant findings.
- Contributing to the organisation and cross-government user research communities - including presenting at meetups, writing blog posts and leading on aspects of practice.
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