Lead Product Researcher
Improbable
Posted 2 years ago
The product design group at Improbable Defence is responsible for the design of valuable and desirable products, enabling our customers to save money and save lives.
Your Mission
As a Lead Product Researcher at Improbable, you will work cross-functionally with product managers, project management, business development, designers, data modelers and engineers across the business to ensure that human-centered design and customer / user research is at the heart of our decision-making. Whilst this role traditionally sits within the UX researcher space, the role title reflects that, as a B2B company, our customers are actually our clients and must be understood in detail alongside our end-users. It is essential that we blend research activities to understand both our customer and their stakeholder needs, goals and requirements, identify, challenge and validate assumptions and ‘up-stream’ solutions and align these to a deep understanding of user needs and behaviour to inform our overall Product design and development strategy. Research will initially be generative in nature to support ‘demonstrator’ and pilot projects with a view to be able to utilise the full spectrum of research methodologies once projects and products mature into a typical Product delivery lifecycle.
Areas for Impact
- Lead and own the overall Product research strategy for the UK Defence business' product suite as part of a growing team.
- Act as ‘consultant’ as the deep-skilled research expert, providing definition, guidance and support to define best-in-class research planning and execution, working closely with multiple Product and Project teams and hand-in-glove with Product Owners and Designers that are embedded in agile Product teams
- Carry out research across a range of platforms, products and services and identify the right methodologies, tools and techniques to use at the right time to ensure agreed objectives are met.
- Be a ‘vocal’ advocate within the team and wider business for UX, customer and stakeholder research through a generative, evaluative, iterative and exploratory process to aid decision- making and test assumptions and hypotheses.
- Define, influence and advocate passionately about the importance of user and customer research as a service to the business, project teams and product owners. Continuously seek to improve and standardise engagements, documents and outputs.
- Lead and help facilitate collaborative workshops (internal and with customers) for a range of research purposes (e.g. discovery planning, prioritisation and execution (eg. assumption-mapping, problem-framing), product scope, journey-mapping and definition.
- Create and continually share (with high engagement and visibility) an accessible knowledge base of research insight and analysis
- Ensure research activity and capturing of research outputs are conducted adhering to GDPR, legal, compliance and security requirements
- Represent the various users and stakeholders of our product suite through well-researched user personas
- Ensure research activity is managed on time, to quality and for the best value.
We'd like to hear from you if you identify with the following:
- Significant industry experience in a Senior or Lead Researcher role, working on large scale, strategic projects
- Experience mentoring and coaching researchers in great research practices
- Experience in leading (preferably B2B) customer and stakeholder engagement with strong influencing and communication skills and a collaborative working style
- Significant experience crafting research using mixed qualitative and quantitative to tackle complex, large scale projects and questions
- Experience setting clear goals, deadlines and key milestones for both research discovery and validation, and tracking progress against these successfully
- Fluent in modern UX research approaches, frameworks and methodologies
- Experience with research and gathering & synthesis of insight and data to inform design decisions
- The ideal candidate would have:Extensive experience working in a complex organisation working alongside / in cross-functional, Product-orientated and agile teams
- Experience working in a B2B setting
While we think the above experience could be important, we’re keen to hear from people that believe they have valuable experience to bring to the role. If you identify with the team and mission, but not all of our requirements, then please still apply!
About Us
Improbable is determined to foster an environment where people can do their best work and feel like they belong. We believe a healthy culture, strong values and contribution from a diverse range of individuals will help us to achieve success.
We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, ancestry, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age disability, veteran status, genetic information, marital status or any other legally protected status.