Department for Education Hiring for Senior User Researcher Job at Bristol, England Full Time

175967

£36,498 – £40,297

Permanent

DFE – Education and Skills Funding Agency – Data Science

Customer Insight
Digital
Market Research
Operational Research

Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time

2

Bristol, South West (region), BS1 6EH : Coventry, West Midlands (region), CV1 2WT : Manchester, North West (region), M1 2WD : Sheffield, Yorkshire and the Humber (region), S1 2FJ

At the Department for Education (DfE) and Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), we build and run world-class public services for the digital age. On joining the DfE, you will be joining a diverse, multidisciplinary team of Digital, Data and Technology specialists. You will have opportunities to learn, grow and lead by supporting teams to make a difference to some of the most fundamental issues in education and social care.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) plays a meaningful role in delivering the Department for Education’s (DfE) key objective of striving for world-class education, training, care for everyone whatever your background.

These roles are in our fast-paced Data Science Service, providing data capture, governance, visualisation, analytical and digital reporting services. These roles will work as part of an agile, multidisciplinary team that focus on delivering digital solutions that put users at the heart of what we do.

If you share our vision, and you are ready to drive innovation and push boundaries, we want to hear from you.

You will:

• Work with service/policy teams to develop and advocate appropriate research strategies to understand user needs for a service, and to continually test and improve products and services.
• Plan, design, prepare and run user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of government services and policies (including activities such as, contextual research, ethnography, interviewing, diary studies, early stage concept and prototype testing, lab-based and contextual usability and accessibility testing).
• Ensure research is shareable and traceable through research data analysis and synthesis of findings.
• Effectively communicate user research findings to the team and the wider organisation, to help develop empathy for our users and inform evidence-based decisions (including presentations at show-and-tells, designing and maintaining research outputs on the team wall, formal reports).
• Help embed a culture of team involvement in user research, team analysis, design rationale and decision-making based on user needs.
• Work closely with insight and analysis colleagues to develop a rich picture of how and why people use our services.
• Advocate for inclusive design and research and conduct research with a diverse range of users, to ensure that our services are usable and accessible for everyone.
• Actively contribute to the user research community within DfE and across government.

For further information on what we expect from a User Researcher, please see the link below:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/user-researcher

Responsibilities

It is essential that you meet the following criteria:

• Research skills: Strong understanding and experience of a range of user research methodologies and their strengths and limitations, and the ability to choose appropriate research methods for different situations and service/product development phases.
• Analysis and synthesis: You understand how to apply basic techniques for the analysis of research data and synthesis of findings. You know how to involve your team in analysis and synthesis. You can present clear findings that colleagues can understand and use.
• User-centred and agile practices: Proven experience of working in multidisciplinary teams to embed user-centred design practices (including identifying and advocating for what users need) and to deliver continuous research.
• Strategic insight: Proven ability to understand the complex problems a team or service is trying to solve as well as organisational strategy and objectives, and ability to align user research activities to inform the team’s decision-making.
• Inclusive research: Strong understanding of the diversity of users of government services and the need to make services usable and accessible for everyone, and experience researching with users with access needs.
• Experience of advocating for user research and engaging sceptical colleagues and stakeholders in research findings.
• Understanding of the social and technological context of government services.
• Understanding the difference between user needs and desires of the user.

Applicants currently holding a permanent post in the Civil Service should note that, if successful, their salary on appointment would be determined by the Department’s transfer / promotion policies.

As a member of the DfE, you will be entitled to join the highly competitive Civil Service Pension Scheme, which many experts agree is one of the most generous in the UK.

You will have 25 days leave, increasing by 1 day every year to a maximum of 30 days after five years’ service. In addition, all staff receive the Queen’s Birthday privilege holiday and 8 days’ bank and public holidays.

We offer flexible working arrangements, such as job sharing, term-time working, flexi-time and compressed hours.

As an organisation, which exists to support education and lifelong learning, we offer our staff excellent professional development opportunities.