***Please note – to apply for this vacancy you will need to submit a CV and Diversity Monitoring Form to recruitment@homesengland.gov.uk. Application forms will not be accepted for this role***

What we are looking for:  Senior User Researchers lead in developing a deep understanding of the people - citizens, businesses or government colleagues - who use a complex service. Their findings allow their teams to design and build services that work better for users and the organisations that provide them, and to continuously improve those services, based on data and evidence.

As a Senior User Researcher you will plan and lead user research activities on larger teams and more complex services. You will build user centred practices in new teams and align user research activities with wider plans to inform the future direction of Homes England. You may supervise and develop other user researchers to assure and improve research practice.

Our successful candidate will:

• Plan, design and prepare a range of user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of complex public services.
• Carry out a wide range of user research activities from recruiting participants, preparing discussion guides and moderating research sessions.
• Lead colleagues to analyse research data and synthesise clear and actionable findings, including working closely with analytical and economics colleagues to create a rich picture of user and housing market behaviour.
• Communicate user research findings to help service teams and the wider organisation develop a deep understanding of users and their needs.

Our successful candidate will have:

• Experience of advocating for user research and engaging sceptical colleagues/stakeholders. Experience of helping teams to adopt user centred service design and delivery practices and embedding them into their agile workflow.
• The ability to understand the complex problems a team is trying to solve, including their wider context and align appropriate user research activities.
• Experience of helping teams adopt a wide range of user research methods, analysis and synthesis techniques and approaches to presenting and sharing findings to inform decision making.
• Proven experience of introducing new user research methods into a team, and guiding colleagues in the choice and effective application of research methods.

The skills we would like are:

• The ability to involve teams in research practices and clearly communicate research findings to teams. Helping the organisation to adopt, improve and innovate their user research practices.
• An understanding of the need to make services accessible and inclusive to all, helping teams understand the diversity of users of government services.
• The ability to work quickly in an agile environment whilst keeping focus on the wider problem a team is trying to solve. Including a knowledge of the basic practices of operating digital services, working closely with colleagues in technical roles to constructively challenges technical constraints.

About Homes England

Homes England is responsible for making sure that people in England have homes that meet their needs. Right now, we do that by funding people who want to build homes, making sure that land is available to build on, and by helping people to buy homes that they can afford.

We were established in 2017, and since then we’ve been working towards our mission of becoming the UK government’s housing accelerator. A disruptive organisation in the heart of government that can build the housing market that this country and the people who live here need.

The housing market is always changing though, and with it so should we.

We’re embarking on ambitious period of transformation, but this isn’t the kind of transformation that’s just about digitising our existing services and making them more efficient.

We need to build products and services that will fix the housing market we have today, whilst building an organisation that will be able to respond to the challenges of tomorrow.

Enabling good people to have good ideas and get things done is how we’ll get there, and that’s where you come in.

What you will get from us:

• The chance to work on something that really matters in a place that values your skills and expertise
• A supportive and inclusive working environment where the organisation’s leadership puts people first
• A range of training and development opportunities suited to your needs
• A growing User Research community devoted to sharing experiences