Senior User Researcher

About Us:

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF 809 CONNECTED BUSINESSES

Digital and Innovation in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories, where creative and enterprising people put local residents and businesses first.

Today, Westminster is the most connected borough in London. But, when David joined us in the mid-2010s, small businesses were still struggling to get connected to fibre. Without gigabit-capable broadband, some companies even resorted to biking memory sticks around the city, simply to share files with clients.

Although still in a junior role, David took the initiative and successfully made the business case for £2.8 million of European funding to support connectivity for small businesses across Westminster. Feedback from businesses has been overwhelmingly positive as the project has enhanced their communications with clients. The new connectivity allows them to make video calls and work remotely. As the pandemic hit and many more people needed to work from home, it became clear just how vital this investment had been.

Fast-forward a few years. Westminster is leading the way for connectivity, as a result of the project businesses are thriving, and David is heading up a service of his own responsible for delivery of the Smart City strategy.

The Role:

As a Senior User Researcher on a one year fixed term contract with our Housing Department, you can make your own powerful contribution to Westminster’s success. Running innovative discovery projects as you work closely with design colleagues, developers, business analysts and other stakeholders, you’ll be on a proactive journey of delivery. With user need at the heart of our ambition to improve outcomes for the people who live, work and play in Westminster, you could be asked to work in a variety of ways. These range from joining a team working to iterate a product, being a member of a Project team using Agile/Waterfall methodologies to deliver agreed outcomes, or working with a Service team delivering against a set of requirements.

Whichever team you work with, you’ll be focused on driving cultural change, and act as a bridge between data and lived experience. Using qualitative and quantitative evidence to help senior leaders and service areas understand what people need from us, and supporting the design services that meet the needs of our residents, you’ll help people see the potential for digital transformation. You’ll also build evidence bases to guide assisted digital delivery, and engage with residents to understand the diversity of need in the borough.

You’ll have a wide range of additional responsibilities – these include working with housing groups across the city, and helping us to open up and listen more empathetically to the needs of our most vulnerable residents. This will involve organising innovative ways to interact with residents, visitors and businesses, supporting policy makers to make decisions which lead to improved services, and acting as an advocate for user-centred design and development.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

With a deep understanding of the skills employed by the user research profession, you’ll have well developed knowledge of the product development lifecycle. It’s important that you possess a good understanding of modern technologies, including the cloud, architecture, Agile delivery methods and software development, as well as user-centred and service design. Capable of building accessible online services, you should also have experience of the cross-government DDAT framework and wider developments in the area of government digital transformation.

We’ll look for a successful track record of working across multi-disciplinary teams to deliver digital products, and of using Agile methodology in a large and complex organisation. You should also have significant experience of balancing client, organisational and technical needs, of working in teams for build products and platforms, and be keen to take an active part in the public sector digital community.

When it comes to your skills, we’ll expect you to be capable of working in Agile ways, identifying problems to solve and building evidence to drive product decisions. Ready to employ a diverse range of methods to understand your clients’ needs, and use data to write concise, easily understood reports for a range of audiences, you’ll have the ability to advise on the best research methods. And we’ll also expect you to be a superb communicator, an inspirational mentor and coach, and be passionate about building diverse teams and communities.

The Council is committed to achieving diverse shortlists to support our desire to increase the number of staff from underrepresented groups in our workforce. We especially encourage applications from a global majority background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background, you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments.

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.

At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit https://www.westminster.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/public-health-strategy-policies-and-reports/equality-duties

As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.

The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.

The Council is committed to achieving diverse shortlists to support our desire to increase the number of staff from underrepresented groups in our workforce. We especially encourage applications from a global majority background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments.