Overview

• Reporting to: Senior User Researcher

• Visa sponsorship: Unfortunately, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role. Applicants should have the right to work in the UK at the time of application.

• Background checks: Due to the nature of the work we do with global governments and partners, all employees need to pass background checks, verifying your identity, education (if relevant), work history, sanctions, criminal record, adverse financial history and right to work.

• You can expect to hear from us, no matter the outcome, by:  16th September

• Salary expectations: We aim for transparency on salary bands. If our range is misaligned with your expectations, we’d welcome an open conversation as early as possible.

Role

We’re growing our research function to better serve public servants around the world. Our mission is to make government smarter by equipping decision-makers with the knowledge, skills and community they need to solve the world’s toughest challenges. User research is central to that mission. We want to embed research deeply in how we design and build, ensuring usability, accessibility and adoption are at the heart of our products.

As a user researcher, you will:

• Champion a user-centred mindset across Apolitical, embedding research into the way we define and build products and tools. 

• Translate insights into product improvements that enhance usability, accessibility and adoption.

• Advocate for investment in product improvements that facilitate the generation of high-quality, just-in-time insights.

This role is both strategic (shaping research approaches and processes) and operational (hands-on with testing, interviews, analysis). It’s a great fit for someone who thrives in a fast-moving environment and enjoys working across disciplines to help teams act with confidence based on evidence.

Tasks and remit

Strategic

• Develop and implement research strategies and processes in collaboration with the Senior Researcher that align with product priorities.

• Promote a culture of research-informed decision-making by ensuring insights are integrated early and consistently into product strategy, planning, design and implementation.

• Support product squads/verticals in defining problems, research questions and prioritising projects, balancing rigour, speed and impact.

• Contribute to process mapping for design, UX writing, and delivery workflows, clarifying when and how user research should be integrated.

Operational

• Plan and conduct end-to-end user research projects using both qualitative and quantitative methods (e.g. interviews, usability testing, surveys, behavioural analytics).

• Lead rapid, ongoing research to support iterative design, continuous discovery, prototype testing and accessibility.

• Manage participant recruitment, design research methodologies, facilitate sessions and synthesise findings into clear, actionable insights.

• Interpret behavioural data to inform product improvements and guide strategic decisions on where to focus qualitative research.

• Scale systems for capturing ongoing user feedback, ensuring all research practices are ethical, accessible and compliant.

Collaborative

• Work closely with product managers, designers, engineers and analysts in defining problems, prioritising projects and co-creating solutions.

• Communicate research findings clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Help teams act confidently based on the evidence.

Role expectations

Timelines may vary, but we expect most team members to achieve the following milestones:

Within one month, you will…

• Develop a strong understanding of our mission, products, user base, and research practices. Get comfortable with our user research tools and workflows.

• Join and actively support a research project within one of our product verticals, observing how we plan, conduct, and share research.

• Publish and share your first internal insights analysis

Within three months, you will…

• Design, plan, run and report on your first end-to-end user research project.

• Start contributing evidence to product planning discussions.

• Build relationships with product managers, designers, and engineers.

Within six months, you will…

• Confidently lead iterative research alongside a product vertical.

• Improve how we capture and share user insights across the company.

• Demonstrate how your research has shaped product decisions, influenced strategy, or uncovered new opportunities for the business.

About you

This is a great fit if you…

• Enjoy combining rigour with pragmatism, knowing when to go deep and when to move quickly to deliver timely insights.

• Have experience with a range of qualitative and quantitative methods (e.g. usability testing, interviews, surveys, analytics).

• You can distil complex findings into clear, compelling stories that resonate with both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Relish collaboration and enjoy helping others make confident, evidence-based decisions.

• You think quickly and connect the dots across diverse data and contexts.

• You’re excited to build, influence stakeholders, and demonstrate the value and impact of user research in shaping product direction.

This likely won’t be the right role if you…

• Prefer established research operations. Our processes are still evolving and you’ll help shape them.

• Find it frustrating when product roadmaps shift quickly. We’re a scale-up, so priorities can change fast.

• Want your work to focus on consumer-facing products — our users are public servants, with unique contexts and constraints.

• Prefer working solo: This is a highly collaborative, stakeholder-rich role.

• Prefer academic-style research. This is a product research role.

Don’t meet every single expectation? Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. Apolitical is dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Application Process

Apolitical uses Applied in our recruitment. Applied aims to overcome unconscious bias in recruiting. Instead of using your CV alone, we'll be asking you to answer questions to test skills needed for the role. The answers are then anonymised, and reviewed in a random order by members of our team. 

The Applied platform also asks some demographic questions before you start your application.  These answers are never visible to the hiring team and don’t affect your application in any way. We only see summary statistics to help us check if our candidate pool is balanced and if everyone has an equal chance to get hired irrespective of their background. If you prefer, you can easily opt out of answering these questions.

Using AI in your application answers

At Apolitical, we embrace new technologies and encourage the use of AI in our work. However, as AI becomes more prevalent, it can be difficult to distinguish between machine-generated content and the unique perspectives of candidates. We’re excited to see how you use AI tools to structure and refine your answers, but we value your unique insights above all else. Ensure your application reflects your voice and how your skills align with our mission.