Job Title: Lead User Researcher
Business Unit: Digital Banking
Salary range: From £62,400 per annum DOE
Location: Hybrid with Hub working in Newcastle/Glasgow
Contract type: Permanent

We’re pretty busy here at Virgin Money, transforming our team to help us disrupt the status quo but we’ve lot more to do, if we are to grow as a digital first bank and that includes accelerating our digital agenda in a truly agile.  We also said ‘Hello’ to A Life More Virgin, our exciting new proposition offering our colleagues more choice, control and flexibility to live and work how they choose.

We’re on the search for a talented Lead User Researcher to join Virgin Money’s Digital Design function. As an expert in your field, you will have direct accountability for governing digital user research across all aspects of Virgin Money’s digital estate.

Working closely with the Head of Digital Design, you will lead a team of talented and capable content designers and defining best practice for User Research in Virgin Money. You’ll influence and educate stakeholders and the wider team on the user centered design process and the merits of investing in user research and its impact on the user experience.

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.

We’re looking for straight talkers, the smart disrupters and the people that ask, ‘why not?’ We welcome insatiable curiosity and relentless optimism to support us in delivering requirements whilst also helping to shape the future of the function.  You’ll inspire change at all stages of product development by delivering compelling, written, in-person and visual presentations on your findings.

Details are critical to quality - the UX team iterate on complex interactions and flows - bringing stakeholders on the journey - ensuring customer needs are at the heart of decision making. Sound good? Read on…

Here’s what it means for YOU:

• 38.5 days annual leave for all colleagues (including bank holidays and pro rata if part-time)​
• Up to five extra paid well-being days per year​
• A 35 hour working week
• 20 weeks paid, gender neutral family leave (52 weeks in total) for expectant parents and those looking to adopt
• Market leading Pension & Private Medical Insurance
• Flexible benefits including Cycle to Work, Wellness & Health Assessments and Critical Illness
• Ability to work anywhere in the UK​ (where the role allows)

And, you get these Red Hot Rewards from day one!

We’ll ask you to...

• Lead a team of experienced User Researchers in our business
• Work with the Head of Digital Design to stand up a User Research Design Centre of Excellence
• Educate stakeholders on the importance and value of User Research
• Take the lead, plan, and conduct research activities to uncover user needs, meet business goals and design requirements
• Manage the end-to-end usability testing process from planning, recruitment through to delivery of insights to stakeholders
• Create 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
• Conduct service level evaluations in order to understand the end-to-end user journey across all touch points to innovate and inform design strategy
• Ensure ethical research practices and procedures are adhered to across all user research activities within your scope

To be brilliant you must have...

• Substantive years of exceptional work experience within Digital User Experience
• A degree qualified in psychology, behavioural sciences, Human Factors, HCI/Computer Science or other related UX / UCD / Service design fields or equivalent practical experience
• Led a team of researchers or designers in a multidisciplinary design team
• Demonstrable experience of applying a wide range of user research methods
• Have led large-scale programmes of user research
• Experience of confidently facilitating of design thinking workshops
• Expert knowledge of user centered design principles and techniques
• Effective interpersonal, communication, and collaboration skills
• Knowledge of Inclusive design principles
• An advanced understand of using collaboration and research tools e.g. Marvel, Invision, Axure, Miro
• Experience of using remote user research platforms such as UserZoom, Userlytics, UserTesting.com or similar

 It’s a bonus if you have (but not essential)...

• Directly managed a Design Research team in a previous role
• Experience with Sketch, Jira, Confluence
• Experience with Agile development process
• Knowledge of behavioural economics and choice architecture
• Experience in leveraging quantitative data such as analytics and data science
• Experience of using remote user testing platforms

We really need you to have the skills and experience listed in the To be brilliant you must have section above, but the rest is just our wish list, so please don’t let that put you off applying, we’d love to hear from you!

Inclusion at Virgin Money
Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do here at Virgin Money. It’s good for you, it’s good for us and it’s amazing for our customers. We know that great minds don’t think alike, so we rely on your diverse thoughts, feelings, beliefs and backgrounds to be the best we can possibly be. Got any questions about this or need some support with your application? We’d love to hear from you so get in touch with our careers team at careers@virginmoney.com.

Now the legal bit
Living A Life More Virgin allows our colleagues to be based anywhere in the UK (if the role allows it) but we will need to you to confirm you have the Right to Work in the UK.

If we offer you a job and you accept, there are some checks we need to complete before you can start with us. This will include a credit and criminal record check, as well as providing 3 years' worth of satisfactory references.