User Researcher
6 Month Contract
Location: UK – Remote (once a month travel to London)
Rate: £500 - £600 per day (Inside IR35)

We’re looking for an experienced User Researcher to support a product team delivering software used within the public sector.

This is a hands-on contract role, working closely with Product, UX, Engineering and customer stakeholders to understand user needs and ensure insight is fed into product development from discovery through to live service.

The role is predominantly remote, although there will be occasional travel to UK offices and customer sites, so candidates must be comfortable with some face-to-face research and stakeholder engagement when required.

What you’ll be doing

• Planning and running user research across discovery, alpha, beta and live phases
• Conducting user interviews, usability testing, user groups, workshops and secondary research
• Working with Product and Engineering teams to turn research findings into clear, actionable recommendations
• Creating research plans, discussion guides, scripts, personas, user journeys and user needs
• Supporting usability testing through wireframes, prototypes or working closely with designers on these
• Presenting research findings to product teams, technical teams and wider stakeholders
• Championing inclusive, ethical and user-centred research practices
• Helping teams better understand users, their needs, behaviours and pain points

What we’re looking for

• Strong background as a User Researcher / UX Researcher, ideally in complex software or digital product environments
• Experience working in Agile product teams and feeding research into product roadmaps/backlogs
• Confident planning and delivering research independently with minimal direction
• Good mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods
• Experience producing clear research outputs such as user needs, personas, journeys, recommendations and insight reports
• Comfortable engaging with users, stakeholders, Product Managers, Designers and Engineers
• Strong communication, influencing and stakeholder management skills
• Good understanding of inclusive design, accessibility and ethical research
• Ability to work with ambiguity and help shape research priorities in a busy product environment

Desirable experience

• Local government / local authority experience
• Wider public sector product or service experience
• Experience with Figma or similar prototyping/wireframing tools
• Experience with Pendo or similar product analytics tools
• Knowledge of WCAG accessibility standards