Senior Design Researcher

Ensera Design is a world-class user-centred innovation and product development consultancy, specializing in the medical and consumer health sectors with offices in Bristol, Colorado and New Jersey. As part of Ensera, we collaborate globally with contract manufacturing facilities in Europe, the USA, and Asia.

About the role

We’re looking for a Senior Design Researcher to join our growing team. This is a pivotal role focused on discovery and exploration—understanding the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ behind user behaviour and translating insights into actionable opportunities for product design and development.

It’s important that you have a passion for healthcare as well as user research. You’ll be excited about the diversity of projects and topic areas that working in a consultancy brings and be comfortable with the natural peaks and troughs that come with this.

You’ll lead large-scale, cross-expertise projects as well as smaller research-only projects, managing budgets and delivering high-quality work. Your responsibilities will include:

• Leading recruitment, project setup, and logistics
• Conducting desk research on topics and trends, creating clear territories to inspire ideas.
• Moderating qualitative user research with confidence and empathy
• Occasional need to draft & analyse simple quantitative surveys
• Facilitating engaging workshops with clients and internal teams
• Capturing (or brief the capture of) compelling video & photo footage of insight and discovery (including ‘behind the scenes’ footage)
• Analysing observations and synthesising actionable insights
• Creating engaging presentations, experience maps, infographics, or service blueprints
• Presenting effectively to clients and internal teams
• Collaborating across departments to achieve the best outcomes
• Raising the bar for research and strategy through new methods and deliverables
• Leading proposal writing
• Supporting briefs and sales opportunities, suggesting new approaches and methods
• Delivering thought leadership e.g. conference presentations, articles, webinars
• Ensuring compliance with QMS and GDPR requirements
• Occasional travel in the UK and overseas (10–15% of your time)
• Helping to develop the team by coaching and mentoring junior colleagues.

Your skills and experience

Whilst you do not need to meet all of these points, please ensure you meet the majority of them before making an application:

• Considerable consultancy experience leading cross-expertise projects as well as smaller research-only projects, preferably at a product design consultancy.
• Experience working with creative & technical experts across multiple areas.
• Experience and/ or passion for the healthcare sector.
• Experience of leading global contextual research, creating screeners and organising recruitment.
• Experience of moderating research sessions and facilitated discussions.
• Experiencing of planning and facilitating workshops.

The salary for this role is £51,000 to £62,500. You will be asked to provide your preferred salary as part of your application.

Why work with us?

We offer interesting and varied work combined with a supportive team culture to provide a stimulating environment where you will have the opportunity to develop and learn from others. We offer flexible working policies where working patterns are agreed with our line managers, taking into account the role, needs of the individual, and the team.

We recognise that we are only as good as our people and we know how important it is to support our team.

We offer:

• Performance-related company-wide bonus.
• Flexible hybrid working in line with our core hours (Mon–Thu, 9:30am–12:00pm & 2:00pm–4:00pm; Fri, 9:30am–12:00pm).
• Private healthcare for you and your family.
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave.
• Salary exchange pension scheme.
• 25 days of annual leave, plus the option to purchase up to one working week and additional days for length of service.
• Access to our Employee Assistance Programme and digital wellbeing platform.
• Cycle to Work & Electric Vehicle Lease schemes.
• Death in service (x4 gross salary).
• Training and development opportunities, including dedicated learning days and regular knowledge-sharing sessions.
• A free lunch the first Monday of every month…