Senior User Researcher (i.AI)
| Posting date: | 14 May 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £55,403 to £70,219 per year |
| Additional salary information: | London: £61,005 - £66,400 National: £55,403 - £61,939 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 allowance. |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 01 June 2025 |
| Location: | Manchester |
| Company: | Government Recruitment Service |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 404030/3 |
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 Senior User Researcher you will plan and deliver user research activities in our product teams. You will build user centred practices in new teams, and align user research activities with wider plans to inform our service proposition. You may supervise and develop other user researchers to assure and improve 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
- Planning, designing and preparing a range of user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of complex government services.
- Carrying out a wide range of user research activities from recruiting participants, preparing discussion guides and moderating research sessions.
- 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.
- Working closely with product managers, designers and developers to turn user research findings into stories and actions that lead to valuable product and service features.
- Aligning user research activities with wider plans to inform service propositions.
- Building user centred practices in new and larger teams.
- Mentoring and guiding more junior user researchers to assure and improve research practice.
- Contributing to the wider user research community - including presenting at meetups, writing blog posts and leading on aspects of practice.
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