User Researcher, HEO, FTC. Liverpool/ Newport

Do you want your User Research skills to make a real difference?

If youre motivated by meaningful work, eager to champion user needs, and ready to help elevate our User Experience practice, join us in shaping services that genuinely lift the load for the volunteers, trustees, and employees at the heart of the charity sector.

We are looking for a user researcher to play a pivotal role in designing the next generation of Charity Commission services.

In this role, youll help shape and refine research approaches that reveal opportunities to improve our systems, simplify complex journeys, and enhance how people experience our services.

You will:

• Generate clear, evidence‑based insights into user needs, behaviours and pain points, ensuring our products and services are grounded in real user experiences rather than assumptions.
• Translate research findings into practical, actionable recommendations that inform design and product decisions, influence roadmaps, and help teams prioritise the changes that deliver the greatest value for users.
• Champion the voice of the user across the organisation, fostering empathy, promoting user‑centred thinking, and ensuring user needs remain central throughout the design and delivery process.
• Strengthen the quality and consistency of research practice, choosing appropriate methods, ensuring research is robust and ethical, and continually improving how we work to support better decision‑making.

The main things you will be doing are:

• Planning and running user research that delivers real insight, using the right methods, involving your multidisciplinary team, and turning findings into clear, actionable guidance.
• Embedding research into agile delivery, working closely with designers, product managers and developers to support iterative design and ensure user needs drive each stage of development.
• Championing inclusive research, ensuring a diverse range of users take part in studies and helping create services that are accessible and usable for everyone.
• Strengthening our research practice, defining the scope of studies, applying good standards, seeking guidance when needed, and continually improving how we work.
• Building strong relationships with stakeholders, communicating research effectively, influencing decisions with evidence, and helping align organisational priorities with user needs.

Key skills and experience and knowledge you will need are:

Ability:

• Experience and understanding of a range of user centred service design and delivery practices.
• The ability to understand what problem your team is trying to solve, and align user research activities to inform decision making and action.
• Experience and understanding of a range of user research methods, when to use those methods and how to apply them correctly.
• A good understanding of the diversity of users of government services, and the ability to include many kinds of users in appropriate research activities.
• Experience of working with colleagues to plan and do continuous user research in a multidisciplinary team.
• Experience of involving your team in research activities, and in the analysis and synthesis.
• A good understanding of the social and technological context for government services, and the ability to align user research activities to help their team understand changing user behaviour.
• An understanding of agile approaches and experience of working in agile teams.
• Ability to champion accessibility and inclusion, consider the impact of new technologies and ensure that designs meet accessibility, legal and security requirements.
• Able to use evidence to challenge assumptions, negotiate with product owners and rationalise design decisions based on user research.

Experience:

• Proven experience of gathering user requirements for web-based services.
• Proven experience of designing, facilitating and analysing a wide range of qualitative and quantitative user research methods.
• Demonstrable knowledge, experience in and passion for user centred design practices for web, service and software development.

Technical:

• Proven experience using Azure Devops.
• User journey mapping using tools such as Visio.
• Working knowledge of GDS Service Design Standards.