User Researcher - Digital Services

Job Location:

Milton Keynes, Remote/Hybrid

Department:
Accessibility, Usability and User Research

Closing Date: 8 November 2026

Weekly

Working Hours:

37

Contract Type:
Permanent

Fixed Term

Contract:

End Date:
See advert

Welsh Language:
Not Applicable

The Open University is the UK's largest university, a world leader in flexible part-time education, combining a mission to widen access to higher education with research excellence, transforming lives through education. Find out more about us and our mission by watching this short video (you will be taken to You Tube by clicking this link).

This role sits within Digital Services which is aligned with the Digital, Data and Design Profession which provides for communities of practice which support professional development. The initial focus of this role will be to support the Student Services Portfolio whose ambition it is to ensure services and products are highly customer-centric and designed with the user, whether student or colleague, in mind ensuring best possible outcomes.

As a User Researcher - Digital Services (known internally as a User Researcher
)you will work in a multi-disciplinary service team and be responsible for helping your team develop a deep understanding of the people who use the end-to-end service. Your findings will allow teams to design, build and develop better, more joined up services more quickly and at lower cost and risk. You’ll be helping to embed user centred research principles and processes to inform the development of new products and the continual improvement of existing products.

This role is especially suited to researchers with experience in practical UX research methods, for example usability testing, prototype testing, tree testing and other evaluative approaches used within digital product and service teams. Experience of applying research findings directly to the design and improvement of services is particularly important.

This role requires a working or practitioner level of proficiency. You’ll need to demonstrate sufficient experience to enable you to work independently and apply UX user research methods across varied contexts and guide others.

We are currently recruiting for the following contracts:

• 1x Permanent, full-time (37 hours per week)
• 1x Fixed-Term Contract (12 months), full-time (37 hours per week)

• Collaborate in a multi-disciplinary service team to reduce complexity and improve service outcomes, leading on planning, designing, and preparing a range of user research activities to support team understanding of users, the service and how it should be designed.
• Lead on the design of user-centred UX research activities, selecting the most appropriate research methods and ensuring all activities are inclusive.
• Run a wide range of user research activities including recruitment of participants, preparation of data collection methods, moderation of research sessions.
• Analyse research data and trends to synthesise clear and actionable findings, including working closely with analytics colleagues to create a rich picture of user behaviour.
• Communicate user research findings to help the team and wider organisation develop a deep understanding of users and their needs.
• Work closely or consult with other user researchers, product managers, designers, developers, and operations teams to turn user research findings into stories and actions that lead to valuable product features, development, and service touchpoints.
• Be an active member and ambassador of the Open University’s User Centred Design Communities of Practice, contributing to our collective knowledge and skills, sharing best practice, and joining up to make the understanding of our users and design…