User Researcher - GDS - SEO

Location

Bristol, London, Manchester

About the job

Job summary

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government — we are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.

Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:

joining up public sector services
harnessing the power of AI for the public good
strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
elevating leadership and investing in talent
funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.

We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.

The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.

Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.

The Cyber and Domains Protection Team provide high quality relevant and actionable vulnerability, incident, threat and dependency information for the protection and resilience of the UK’s Public Sector’s digital services. We protect public sector domain name spaces such as “.gov.uk”, and ensure they remain stable, trusted, well managed and resistant to compromise. The team also helps protect the infrastructure tools and services associated with these domains.

Job description

As a User Researcher you’ll:

engage with organisations across the public sector to help define and improve cyber security services
plan, design and prepare a range of user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of several services
deliver a wide range of user research activities from recruiting participants, preparing discussion guides and moderating research sessions
be able to select and apply user research techniques that are appropriate to the context
communicate user research findings to help teams and the wider organisation develop a deep understanding of users and their needs
work closely with subject matter experts to turn user research findings into stories and actions that lead to valuable improvements
champion user centred practices to drive greater user orientation across the team.
collaborate with the wider user researcher community across government and share best practice
utilise your skills and expertise on other projects or other aspects of this project during your engagement should our organisation’s priorities change

Person specification

We’re interested in people who:

have broad experience of planning and conducting user research activities that span a large number of organisations or business units and presenting clear findings for your colleagues to use
will have applied knowledge of a range of qualitative and quantitative user research methods, and the ability to select appropriate approaches for different contexts
have worked in multidisciplinary teams to deliver new services and involved your colleagues to include many kinds of users in appropriate research activities
have experience of helping several service teams adopt user-centred service design and delivery practices and embed them into their agile workflow
have the ability to communicate complex research data into clear findings and insights and tailor them to the needs to various stakeholders
have an understanding of cyber security risk and government cyber security best practices
have experience planning, designing and carrying out research activities according to the Service Manual