User Researcher

IBM; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 81,000 - 122,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Sabbatical program

Paternity/maternity leave

Private medical

Dental cover

Life assurance

Group pension plan (salary sacrifice)

Job summary

IBM Consulting UK FutureNow invites you to lead broad user research programs across government services, shaping policy and service design with a senior, evidence-driven approach. As a Senior Experience Consultant, you’ll guide cross‑functional teams, mentor researchers, and champion accessible, user‑centred design while leveraging advanced qualitative and quantitative methods.

The role offers flexible working, strong learning opportunities, and a path to senior leadership within IBM’s global

Qualifications

• Experience leading planning, design, and execution of end-to-end user research using a broad range of qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Shaping research strategies that drive decision-making and align with client needs and organisational objectives.
• Provide guidance, mentoring, and quality assurance to researchers, improving research practice across teams.
• Develop advanced artefacts such as service‑level journey maps, research frameworks, behavioural models, and thematic insight repositories.
• Facilitate workshops and collaborative sessions with senior stakeholders to prioritise research needs and embed evidence‑based decisions.
• Conduct expert reviews, heuristic evaluations, and cognitive walkthroughs to assess and improve user experience quality.
• Communicate complex insights clearly and persuasively to diverse audiences, including senior leaders.
• Champion user‑centred design principles and influence product and service direction across multidisciplinary teams.
• Remain current on emerging research methodologies, accessibility standards, and best practices in user‑centred design.

Responsibilities

• Develop comprehensive user research plans, aligned with project goals and wider organisational priorities.
• Design and carry out research activities that help teams develop a deep understanding of users and their needs across government services.
• Document user insights clearly and consistently, producing high‑quality outputs such as personas, journey maps, research summaries, and insight repositories.
• Ensure research evidence effectively informs policy, propositions, service design, content design, and interaction design to achieve both user and policy outcomes.
• Actively participate in customer craft communities, contributing IBM best practices, frameworks, and thought leadership to strengthen capability.

Skills

Research leadership

Qualitative methods

Quantitative methods

Stakeholder facilitation

Mentoring researchers

Service design

Accessibility testing

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Job description

At IBM Consulting UK FutureNow, you’ll build a career at the forefront of hybrid cloud and AI, working with leading clients across the public and private sectors.

You’ll collaborate with top industry professionals, gain hands on experience with cutting edge technologies, and deliver solutions that create real business impact. From day one, you’ll work on meaningful, high profile programmes that stretch your skills and accelerate your growth.

We invest heavily in you—supporting continuous learning, in demand skills development, and long term career progression. You’ll thrive in a flexible, inclusive environment that values curiosity, encourages reinvention, and recognises what makes you unique.

We offer:

• Tools and policies to support your work-life balance from flexible working approaches, sabbatical programs, paid paternity leave, maternity leave and an innovative maternity returners scheme
• More traditional benefits, such as 25 days holiday (in addition to public holidays), private medical, dental & optical cover, online shopping discounts, an Employee Assistance Program, life assurance and a group pension plan through salary sacrifice.

Your role and responsibilities

A Senior Experience Consultant specializing in Research provides strategic leadership in shaping, delivering, and championing user research across digital services. The role leads complex research programmes, oversees methodological decisions, and ensures insights directly influence policy, service design, and delivery across the lifecycle. This includes advanced qualitative and quantitative approaches such as ethnographic studies, generative discovery, large‑scale surveys, workshops, prototype testing, and accessibility evaluations. Senior researchers interpret complex data, synthesise insights at scale, and guide teams in understanding user needs, behaviours, and systemic challenges.

Key activities:

• Develop comprehensive user research plans, aligned with project goals and wider organisational priorities.
• Design and carry out research activities that help teams develop a deep understanding of users and their needs across government services.
• Document user insights clearly and consistently, producing high‑quality outputs such as personas, journey maps, research summaries, and insight repositories.
• Ensure research evidence effectively informs policy, propositions, service design, content design, and interaction design to achieve both user and policy outcomes.
• Actively participate in customer craft communities, contributing IBM best practices, frameworks, and thought leadership to strengthen capability.

Required education

None

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Experience leading planning, design, and execution of end‑to‑end user research using a broad range of qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Skilled at shaping research strategies that drive decision‑making and align with client needs and organisational objectives.
• Provide guidance, mentoring, and quality assurance to researchers, improving research practice across teams.
• Develop advanced artefacts such as service‑level journey maps, research frameworks, behavioural models, and thematic insight repositories.
• Facilitate workshops and collaborative sessions with senior stakeholders to prioritise research needs and embed evidence‑based decisions.
• Conduct expert reviews, heuristic evaluations, and cognitive walkthroughs to assess and improve user experience quality.
• Communicate complex insights clearly and persuasively to diverse audiences, including senior leaders.
• Champion user‑centred design principles and influence product and service direction across multidisciplinary teams.
• Remain current on emerging research methodologies, accessibility standards, and best practices in user‑centred design.

This role is suited to a highly skilled, senior professional dedicated to understanding user behaviour and shaping accessible, equitable, and effective public services. If you are an influential, strategic, and analytically strong research leader able to drive impact at scale, we encourage you to apply.

This role is subject to pre‑employment screening in line with the UK Government’s Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). An additional range of Personal Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NVS) may apply, this could include meeting the eligibility requirements for The Security Check (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV).

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Experience with advanced analytics, A/B testing, card sorting, or contextual inquiry.
• Experience mentoring or line‑managing junior researchers.
• Familiarity with digital accessibility standards and specialised accessibility testing tools.
• Knowledge of behavioural science, service design, or systems thinking.
• Experience using insight repositories or researchOps platforms.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Consulting is IBM’s consulting and global professional services business, with market leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients’ businesses through the power of collaboration. We believe in the power of technology responsibly used to help people, partners and the planet.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM

In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients’ success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.

Being an IBMer means you’ll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you’ll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM

IBM’s greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.

Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we’re also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it’s time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.

IBM is proud to be an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

IBM wants you to bring your whole self to work and for you this might mean the ability to work flexibly. If you are interested in a flexible working pattern, please talk to our recruitment team to find out if this is possible in the current working environment.