Lead User Researcher

Who you are

• Demonstrates strong ownership and leadership across design deliverables, ensuring alignment with project goals
• Anticipates client needs and addresses design challenges, delivering proactive solutions
• Exhibits excellent communication, both with clients and within the team, and is a trusted design voice in meetings
• Takes responsibility for fostering a collaborative and productive team environment, including mentoring and upskilling peers
• 8+ years of hands-on experience in user research, human-centred design, or service design
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in User Research, Psychology, HCI, Anthropology, or a related field
• Extensive experience leading user research across complex digital services in agile environments
• Strong portfolio or case studies showing research that informed successful service or product outcomes
• Proficiency with research tools and methods including usability testing, depth interviews, journey mapping, and persona creation
• Comfortable presenting findings to senior stakeholders and advocating for users in delivery decisions
• Working knowledge of GDS service standards, assessments, and digital service design principles
• Strong understanding of inclusive design and accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG 2.2)
• Eligible for SC clearance (British citizen or equivalent, with 5 years continuous UK residency)
• Experience working on UK government or local authority services
• Familiarity with GOV.UK design system, forms, and content patterns
• Understanding of digital analytics tools and the role of behavioural data in triangulating insight
• Exposure to service blueprinting or policy/service integration

What the job involves

• As a Lead User Researcher at Tangity, you’ll play a critical role in shaping meaningful, accessible public services that deliver lasting value to users. You’ll lead research initiatives across the full delivery lifecycle—helping agile teams validate assumptions, reduce delivery risk, and prioritise work based on real user needs
• You will work autonomously, collaborating with designers, BAs, developers, and product managers to ensure evidence drives decisions at every stage. You’ll also contribute to service strategy, guide team ways of working, and foster a user-first mindset across the wider project and client organisation
• Plan, lead, and deliver user research for public services across Discovery, Alpha, Beta, and Live phases
• Apply a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods—e.g. depth interviews, usability testing, contextual inquiry, surveys—to surface behavioural insights
• Establish and maintain lightweight feedback loops with target user groups, ensuring continued insight into live service usage and evolving needs
• Synthesise research findings into clear, actionable outputs such as problem statements, user journeys, personas, and pain point maps
• Translate insights into backlog priorities and design recommendations that inform product strategy and roadmap decisions
• Collaborate with Business Analysts and UX/UI Designers to ensure proposed solutions are evidence-based and grounded in actual user behaviour
• Support design iteration and decision-making by testing early service concepts, prototypes, and touchpoints
• Communicate findings to varied audiences—through visual artefacts, research reports, presentations, and stakeholder playbacks
• Facilitate design and research workshops, playback sessions, and show-and-tells to drive cross-functional understanding and alignment
• Embed a user-first culture across agile teams by encouraging regular exposure to user feedback and service impact
• Ensure inclusive and accessible research approaches that align with GDS and WCAG standards
• Mentor junior researchers and help shape Tangity’s research practice, contributing to tools, templates, and team capability building
• Lead and execute design solutions for complex, high-impact projects with strategic oversight
• Proactively contribute to client meetings, presentations, and workshops
• Mentor and guide team members, ensuring design standards are maintained
• Foster client relationships by anticipating needs, presenting recommendations, and driving outcomes

Benefits

• A people focused business
• Excellent opportunities to grow your career, including an online training platform with 3000+ courses, accessible from everywhere, to sharpen your skills
• A varied client base