Senior UX Researcher (12 months)

NatWest Group; Manchester; On-site; GBP 80,000 - GBP 100,000; Full time

Job description

Overview

• In this dynamic role, you’ll have the chance to make a real impact by contributing to the user research and experience design strategy, as well as leading the delivery of associated strategic initiatives
• You’ll lead user research for mid‑size and increasingly complex projects, ensuring designs are user‑centred, inclusive, and aligned with experience design, business area, and enterprise strategies
• This is an opportunity for you, as an evolving leader, to lead teams toward achieving project goals while continuing to develop your leadership skills and capabilities
• We are offering this role for a period of 12 months

Join us as a Senior UX Researcher

What you’ll do

As a Senior UX Researcher, you’ll lead the scoping, direction, and planning of user research for mid‑size and increasingly complex projects and programmes, while also contributing to the development of the overall user research strategy. You’ll also oversee and execute user research activities across the business area, ensuring outputs are validated, aligned with user needs and business requirements, and free from delivery barriers. In this role, you’ll make project‑ and programme‑level research decisions within your defined authority, maintaining momentum, resolving blockers, and making sure that deliverables support informed, user‑centred design decisions that balance user needs with business goals.

Moreover, we’ll expect you to collaborate closely across design disciplines and other functions, engaging key stakeholders to make sure of alignment and effective delivery of projects, programmes, and strategic initiatives. You’ll also create, evolve, and promote user research guidelines and standards to drive consistency, quality, and scalability across the bank. Alongside continuously developing your own domain knowledge and leadership skills, you’ll coach, mentor, and give constructive feedback to colleagues, helping to build capability and advance the maturity of research and design practice. Throughout all initiatives, you’ll make sure that research activities generate high‑quality, inclusive insights that reflect diverse user perspectives and enable meaningful, user‑centred decision‑making.

In Addition, You’ll Be

• Enabling collaboration across multiple disciplines and functions for programmes and complex projects, ensuring clarity on responsibilities and deliverables for each discipline
• Communicating the value and impact of user research decisions for projects and programmes to a wide range of audiences in a clear and compelling way
• Acting as a key contact for stakeholders, managing expectations, influencing decisions, and resolving risks, conflicts, and alignment issues within defined authority and escalating when necessary
• Shaping and evolving guidelines and standards to drive scalability, consistency, quality, accessibility, and inclusion in user research and design, and ensuring all outputs comply with necessary regulations
• Supporting user research capability by coaching and mentoring colleagues, sharing best practice, contributing to community engagement, and proactively improving your own user research skills

The skills you’ll need

We’re looking for someone with a strong understanding of user‑centred design and comprehensive knowledge of user research methods and practices. You must also have a solid grasp of how to embed accessibility and inclusion into both research and design. Experience delivering user research for mid‑size and increasingly complex projects and programmes as part of digital product and service development is essential too, supported by a portfolio that showcases your ability to gather and communicate diverse user perspectives to inform design decisions.

To succeed in this role, you’ll need experience working in multidisciplinary teams and collaborating effectively with cross‑functional partners, along with proven leadership skills. Strong stakeholder management is also key, with a focus on clear communication, expectation management, and the ability to present the rationale behind your work while advocating for the value and impact of design.

Other Key Skills And Experience You’ll Need

• Experience defining and leading user research projects and programmes at pace, using agile delivery methods
• Strong skills in design thinking, research, data analysis, and facilitation
• Experience supporting user research capability development including coaching and mentoring, as well as sharing constructive feedback and knowledge with colleagues

Additional Skills And Experience That Will Be Beneficial

• Supporting product designers in iterating experiences and switching between mixed methods in response to new learnings and evolving business objectives
• Knowledge of improving customer experience and understanding of complex lending products, particularly in the SME space
• Familiarity with more complex corporate banking platforms, products and services and recruiting niche users for research, particularly through liaising with customer‑facing teams
• Experience of developing new and enhanced customer experiences within complex and constrained legacy systems