The Role:

As Head of User Research, you must be familiar with every aspect of the product development lifecycle for software including up-front research and discovery, definition, and analysis of requirements.

What makes a good candidate? Someone who has exceptional research skills, but who also understands the tradeoffs between rigor and being scrappy, and ultimately how research translates into design and product decisions.

The role requires you to be an expert researcher with a proven track record of doing research that impacts a complex and diverse set of products and building and managing high-performing teams, preferably with researchers of varying specialisations (i. e. design research, human factors, UX research, etc.).

You will be required to articulate the vision of the team to design, engineering and product leadership and be a strong advocate for the role of research in product development.

You must become a trusted, strategic partner to product stakeholders by communicating and demonstrating the value of user research, and by delivering insights that lead to demonstrable business value. You must be a qualitative and quantitative data expert.

Your performance is measured by the impact of the products you & your team launch that solves real customer needs.

Skills & Qualifications (Essential):

A / M. S or PH. D in Human Factors, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Cognitive or Experimental Psychology, Sociology or a related field
Extensive professional research experience in both hardware and software and in all areas of research (including design research, market research and quantitative research).
Previous experience leading / managing a research team
Experience prioritising in-house research efforts and understanding when and how to leverage 3rd-party vendors.
Research experience across different methods, with both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.
Background implementing a variety of research methods (e. g. rapid ethnography, contextual inquiry, focus groups, surveys, concept testing, usability validation, experimentation, etc.).
Track record of discovering, synthesising, and socialising actionable insights that have influenced real product decisions.
Expert at Analysis and synthesis. You can help an organisation adopt a wide range of analysis and synthesis techniques. You know how to help an organisation continually assure, improve and innovate their practices to generate clear and valuable findings.
Expert in Inclusive research. You can help the business understand the diversity of users. You know how to guide organisations to adopt inclusive practices and apply what they learn to design and deliver accessible services that work for all users.
Strategic insight. You understand organisational strategy and objectives. You can align research activities across the organisation to create strategic insights. You can align wider research activities across different departments and different geographic locations.

Skills (Desirable):

Society and technology. You can align user research activities to help the organisation understand changing user behaviour, and the challenges and opportunities that this insight might uncover, and a subject matter expert.
Technical understanding. You know about the technologies used to build and operate digital services. You can collaborate closely with colleagues in different digital disciplines.
Demonstrable expertise of User-centred and agile practices. You understand and have extensive experience of a range of user-centred and agile approaches. You help adopt user-centred practices and embed them into agile service design and delivery. You know how to advocate for user research across an organisation.

Head Of User Research