User Researcher - Consultant

Opencast | B Corp™; Newcastle upon Tyne; On-site; GBP 43,000 - 51,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

7% employer pension contribution

Share options

Discretionary bonus

Flexible working hours

25 days' holiday

Life happens days

Wellbeing support

Professional development

Volunteering opportunities

Supportive team

Job summary

Opencast, a growing tech consultancy, is seeking a User Researcher to uncover needs and voices of people, feeding insights into design decisions across public sector clients. You’ll work with Service Designers, Content Designers, and Interaction Designers to shape impactful services and deliver clear research outputs.

We value curiosity, pragmatism and ethics, with a focus on GDPR, MRS guidelines, and GDS standards, within agile delivery teams. Travel to client sites may be required.

Qualifications

• Chosen from a range of research methods to design the right research approach for the project phase.
• Produced the required ethics and governance documentation and materials for research activity.
• Recruited a wide range of participants in line with GDPR and MRS guidelines.
• Identified key themes, user needs, personas, and design feedback through analysis.
• Produced clear and concise user research deliverables to meet the needs of different audiences.
• Worked to GDS standards.
• Worked in agile delivery teams.
• Planned your own tasks to achieve the objectives of your project.
• Respectfully challenged decisions or solutions you don’t agree with.
• Collaborated well with your colleagues, teammates and clients.

Responsibilities

• You’ll conduct research which supports the development of a user centred service.
• You’ll work closely with other user centred design roles to solve problems for our clients.
• You’ll ensure that work aligns with Opencast's quality, environmental, and information security policies.

Skills

User research

Research methods

Ethics & governance

Participant recruitment

Data analysis

GDPR compliance

GDS standards

Agile delivery

Stakeholder collaboration

Job description

Do you want to use research to shape services that make a real impact? Are you ready to bring curiosity and insight to projects that improve people’s lives?

If so, Opencast could be the place for you. We’re a growing tech consultancy that creates user-centred solutions with purpose for our clients in government, healthcare and purpose-driven businesses. As a User Researcher, you’ll uncover the needs and voices of people, work in multi-disciplinary teams to feed these needs into design decisions shape impactful services, and bring curiosity, pragmatism and insight to projects. You’ll enjoy, a supportive community whilst working across public sector clients, to solve real problems that impact people's lives.

The role

You’ll conduct research which supports the development of a user centred service. You’ll work closely with other user centred design roles, such as Service Designer, Content Designers, and Interaction Designers, to solve complex and interesting problems for our clients.

You’ll ensure that work is carried out in accordance with Opencast's quality, environmental, and information security policies and procedures, as well as applicable customer policies, standards, and procedures while working on client.

If you take a leadership role in projects, have a variety of project experience and support more junior colleagues working in design and delivery research you may be better suited to our Senior User Researcher role.

To succeed in this role, you need experience of delivering user research to a delivery team.

In your CV and interview(s), please show how you have:

• chosen from a range of research methods to design the right research approach for the project phase
• produced the required ethics and governance documentation and materials for research activity
• recruited a wide range of participants in line with GDPR and MRS guidelines
• identified key themes, user needs, personas, and design feedback through analysis
• produced clear and concise user research deliverables to meet the needs of different audiences
• worked to GDS standards
• worked in agile delivery teams

In addition to user research skills, there are essential core skills you’ll need to work effectively as a consultant.

In the interview, please show how you have:

• planned your own tasks to achieve the objectives of your project
• respectfully challenged decisions or solutions you don’t agree with
• collaborated well with your colleagues, teammates and clients

In your interview we’ll ask you questions based around these experiences. We’ll also ask you to present a piece of work which demonstrates these skills and experiences.

If you have any of this experience, please show it on your CV and in the interview.

Consultant salary range: £43,000-£51,000

Requirements

Due to the nature of this role, applicants must either currently hold active Security Check (SC) Clearance or be eligible to obtain it.

Eligibility typically requires UK citizenship and continuous residence in the UK for the past five years, with no single absence exceeding 28 consecutive days. As a result, we are unable to progress applications from candidates who do not meet these requirements.

What we offer

• 7% employer pension contribution
• share options
• discretionary bonus
• flexible working hours (aligned to client commitments)
• 25 days' holiday
• access to 3 annual "life happens" days to support unexpected situations
• wellbeing support
• ongoing professional development
• volunteering opportunities
• chance to be part of a genuinely supportive team

Where you’ll work

Applicants must be able to commute to offices and client sites as part of their normal working arrangements, as travel is essential to fulfilling the responsibilities of the role.

We include you

We welcome candidates from all identities, attributes, ways of thinking and backgrounds to thrive in a career at Opencast. Our aim is for the diversity of our people to be reflected in the solutions we deliver, to help create a fairer society for all.

Interview

Interviews will be conducted via Microsoft Teams. We’re happy to make adjustments to support your needs.