Senior User Research Manager

Monzo; London, Cardiff; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

A digital banking platform is seeking an experienced User Research Manager to oversee a team responsible for driving product strategy. This role focuses on understanding customer needs, supporting user research methodologies, and ensuring team development in an inclusive environment. Candidates should have a strong background in product research and experience leading diverse teams.

Benefits

Flexible working hours

Learning budget of £1,000 per year

Opportunity for part-time work

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience as a User Researcher in a product-role.
• Experience managing a diverse team of User Researchers.
• Strong collaboration skills with Data, Product, and Design teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of User Researchers across product collectives.
• Collaborate with leadership to strategize product direction.
• Develop sustainable practices for team growth and impact.

Skills

User research methodologies

Team management

Cross-functional collaboration

Coaching and mentoring

Diversity and inclusion

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Job description

We’re on a mission to make money work for everyone.

We’re waving goodbye to the complicated and confusing ways of traditional banking.

With our hot coral cards and get-paid-early feature, combined with financial education on social media and our award winning customer service, we have a long history of creating magical moments for our customers!

We’re not about selling products - we want to solve problems and change lives through Monzo ️

We’re here to make money work for everyone and we're doing things differently. For too long, banking has been obtuse, complex and opaque.

We want to change that and build a bank with everyone, for everyone. Our amazing community suggests features, test the app and give us constant feedback so we can build something everyone loves.

We're focused on solving problems, rather than selling financial products. We want to make the world a better place and change people's lives through Monzo.

About our User Research Team: We are currently a team of more than 20 individual contributors, who are embedded into collectives i.e Core Banking, Business Banking etc, working cross functionally with Product Design, Product Management and Engineering teams. Our research organisation is led by Katherine Vaughan, our Director of User Research.

What you’ll be working on:

• Managing a team of user researchers across 1-3 “collectives” (these are product verticals like Payments or Wealth)
• Working closely with with your collective leadership to shape our product strategies and ensure the teams are solving the right customer problems in the right ways
• Scaling the impact research has on our strategies across the organisation.
• Increasing visibility of key research insights and making sure action is taken as a result
• Working in partnership with the Director of Research to make sure everyone in the research team is working on the highest impact areas, and individuals have autonomy to make those decisions where possible.
• Understanding your direct reports well, so you can place them where they fit, for impact, growth and happiness.
• Developing sustainable ways of nurturing all talent within the Research team.
• Leading forums that allow the whole research team to feed into decisions and shape the team.
• Working with Research Operations and the Research Director to scale team systems and processes as we grow.
• Continually raising the standard of research through timely feedback, and improved processes and rituals.
• Hiring brilliant, diverse User Researchers, and ensuring a smooth onboarding process for them.
• Making sure the team has an active presence in the external community and is appealing to a diverse set of hiring prospects.
• Work within 1-3 critical business areas to develop and deliver a product strategy, including building a deep understanding of customer needs and market opportunities, and how we’ll differentiate ourselves and grow.
• Providing support for around 5-10 direct reports, through clear development goals, timely updates and feedback, and regular 1:1s.
• Collaborate with and influence key stakeholders across the organisation, including the wider product teams, company leadership, marketing, compliance, legal, regulatory affairs and more to get alignment and support for the strategy
• Work closely with design, product, marketing data and engineering leadership in your areas to set the right conditions for the teams to do their best work and problem solve our key customer needs
• Shaping development practices, like progression frameworks, across the wider team.
• Taking an active role in our Design Leadership team, alongside our Chief Design Officer, Research Director, Design Directors, and Senior Design Managers.
• Continually educating everyone at Monzo, including senior stakeholders, on what research can and can’t be used for.

You should apply if:

• You have experience working as a User Researcher in a high growth product or technology organisation
• You enjoy bringing momentum to projects, unblocking progress and focusing on achieving the most exciting outcomes (not the fanciest outputs)
• You care about the quality of the product that sits in our users’ hands, and the overall experience they have with Monzo
• You’ve worked collaboratively with other disciplines like Data, Product and Design
• You’re an experienced coach, mentor and leader of seasoned User Researchers with at least 5 years experience
• You’re happiest when the people in your teams feel supported, are growing, and can work effectively
• You have an approachable and supportive leadership style when you’re needed, but you also empower direct reports to work autonomously
• You’ve managed a team of at least 3 high performers, and resolved performance issues
• You have experience teaching and coaching non-researchers about research
• You have demonstrable experience making decisions that promote diversity and inclusion
• You have experience making use of marketing insights, quantitative user research, product data and a range of other insights for better decision making

The Interview Process:

Our interview process involves 3 main stages:

• Recruiter call (30 minutes). A video chat with Natalie who is part of our hiring team. This focuses on general suitability for Monzo.
• Research Leadership Ways of Working (60 minutes). You will be sent a pre-interview task by the hiring team, which you will discuss in the interview, followed by situation questions.
• Final loop (Total 1hr 30-2 hours). Split into 2 interviews - Managing teams & People + Teamwork & Impact

Our average process takes around 2-3 weeks but we will always work around your availability.

What’s in it for you:

This role can be based in our London office, but we're open to distributed working within the UK (with ad hoc meetings in London).

We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team.

Learning budget of £1,000 a year for books, training courses and conferences

And much more, see our full list of benefits here

If you prefer to work part-time, we'll make this happen whenever we can - whether this is to help you meet other commitments or strike a great work-life balance.

#LI-NH1

Equal opportunities for everyone

Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we’re making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, we’re embracing diversity by fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog , 2024 Diversity and Inclusion Report and 2024 Gender Pay Gap Report.

We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status.

If you have a preferred name, please use it to apply. We don't need full or birth names at application stage

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

First Name *

Last Name *

Email *

Phone *

Resume/CV *

Enter manually

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Enter manually

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Select...

Please confirm your UK Right to Work status. * Select...

We legally have to verify your Right to Work in the UK before you can start working for us. We're asking for this information now so we know later what type of right to work check we need to do. Your answer to this question won't affect the outcome of your application, unless you'd need visa sponsorship but are applying to a role we can't sponsor.

Keeping your data safe is really important to us. * Select...

If you’d like to, please share your preferred pronouns (eg. they/them/theirs, she/her/hers).

If you'd like to, please spell out your name how it's pronounced so we know how to say it.

Do you have experience managing a team of experienced User Researchers? * Select...

Do you have experience working for an internal, product-lead/technology business as an IC researcher and manager? * Select...

Do you have experience collaborating in a cross-functional, product environment with Data Science, Design and Product Management? * Select...

Do you have experience with complex performance challenges, managing both under and over-performing user researchers? * Select...

Identity survey

Our goal at Monzo is to make money work for everyone. To do that, working at Monzo must work for everyone. We want to create an equitable, engaged and innovative workplace which gives people from all backgrounds the support they need to thrive and grow.

Making Monzo work for everyone starts right at the beginning of every Monzonaut's journey: when they apply to work here. This demographic survey will help us better understand the people who apply to work at Monzo. It'll help us see how different groups progress through our hiring process, and where we need to make improvements to be more inclusive. If you choose to fill it out, all of the information you give us is:

• Voluntary . And we've included a "prefer not to say" option for every question. It'd be helpful if you still fill out the survey even if you choose "prefer not to say" for every question, as it's useful for us to understand & record this. We won't know if you choose to fill this survey in or not.
• Anonymous to Monzo . We can't tie your responses to you and they won't make a difference to the outcome of your application. We'll only use grouped responses for equal opportunities monitoring in our hiring process.

By filling out this survey, you agree that we can use your responses for the purposes we've mentioned above. You are not letting us know if we need to make any adjustments to the hiring process because of disability or neurodiversity - to do this please email us.

How would you describe your gender identity? Select...

Do you identify as transgender? Select...

What's your sexual orientation? Select...

Do you identify as having a disability? Select...

Do you consider yourself to be neurodivergent? Select...