As a HMRC User Researcher, you will have the unique opportunity to work on some of the largest digital transformation programme undertaken in Government and other sectors. Your role is to ensure that user needs are intrinsic to the design and implementation of our services.

You will join a lively and encouraging User Research community, based at one of our CDIO (Chief Digital Information Office) Centre's across the UK, with access to research labs and facilities. Our team is passionate, hard working and committed to conducting robust research with real-world impact, and bring varied expertise from the private, voluntary and public sectors.

You will be working for HMRC, focussing on services for the Valuation Office Agency (VOA).

The Valuation office Agency is responsible for valuing every commercial and domestic property in England and Wales. Their work ensures that people across the country pay the correct taxes for their property through council tax or business rates, and receive the right financial support.

The VOA is going through a period of change when it comes to its online services as well as its internal services. You will be helping make sure users are at the heart of that change. Our blog tells you a bit more about what we do and how we do it.
https://hmrcdigital.blog.gov.uk/category/user-research/

This is an exciting time to join an organisation that probably doesn’t work how you’d imagine a government organisation would!

Responsibilities As a User Researcher in our team, you will be:

• Planning, designing, preparing and executing a range of user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of government services.

• Identifying the appropriate research method depending on the phase of the service lifecycle, such as ethnographic research methods, usability testing and A/B tests.

• Working closely with a multidisciplinary agile scrum team who are passionate about their work, and ensure research has a significant contribution to the delivery of our services.

• Leading colleagues to analyse research data and synthesise clear and actionable findings, including working closely with analytics colleagues to create a rich picture of user behaviour.

• Communicating user research findings to help the team and wider organisation develop a deep understanding of users and their needs including presentations at show and tells, designing and maintaining research outputs on the team wall, creating formal reports.

• Contributing to the wider user research community including presenting at meetups and writing blog posts.

• Mentoring and managing junior user researchers.

Essential criteria:

You should demonstrate proven experience in:-

• Experience and understanding of a range of user centred service design and delivery practices.

• The ability to understand what problem your team is trying to tackle, and align user research activities to advise decision making and action.

• Conducting user research projects with demonstrated impact on the final user experience.

• Identifying user needs using multiple methodologies.

• A good understanding of the diversity of users of government services, and the ability to include many kinds of users in appropriate research activities.

• Using a range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies including ethnographic techniques, usability testing, remote testing, and survey design.

• Working in an open, iterative and collaborative way in a multidisciplinary scrum team.

• Meeting ambitious deadlines and delivering high-quality work on schedule, including quickly turning around research plans and outputs in different formats.

• Synthesising multiple inputs (reporting data, metrics, qualitative and quantitative insights) to generate relevant and implementable recommendations.

• Involving teams and key individuals in analysis and synthesis to increase consensus and challenge assumptions.

• Assessing services to ensure they meet the Service Standard.

• Presenting clear findings that colleagues can understand and use.

You will also need:

A degree in psychology, cognitive science, human factors, computer science, product/interaction design, human computer interaction or related fields.

It’s desirable that you have:

• An understanding of agile approaches and experience of working in agile teams.

• Some knowledge of current technologies used to build and operate digital services, and the different technical roles in a digital team.

• Understanding of the GDS Service Manual & Government Digital Standard.

• Knowledge or experience of working in an agile delivery environment.

• Knowledge or experience of visualising user research findings.

Ideally we would like you to have experience in conducting research:

• With people with low digital skills.

• With people with accessibility needs.

• With diverse and hard-to-reach audiences.

A degree in psychology, cognitive science, human factors, computer science, product/interaction design, human computer interaction or related disciplines.

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• DDaT Capability Framework Skill – Research skills
• DDaT Capability Framework Skill – Analysis and synthesis
• DDaT Capability Framework Skill – User centred and agile practices