Senior design researcher

Wilson Fletcher is on the hunt for an ambitious design researcher to join our London based studio.

We design digital-first strategies, services and experiences that help our clients to accelerate service innovation and modernise their businesses. We’re looking for a skilled researcher to join our team.

A minimum of 5 years experience
Full time 40 hours - (note: we operate a full-pay, 4 day week)
London-based
Role open now

The role at a glance

We are looking for an exceptional practitioner who specialises in design research to join our team. You will be responsible for a broad range of research and insight activities, working alongside our strategists and designers, and our client teams.

At the heart of this role is a passion for understanding people, and uncovering unknown behaviours or unidentified opportunities. Our work is centred on business innovation, so whether transforming an entire company or developing a new service concept, it’s essential that we develop compelling insights to inform our work. A strong understanding of qualitative design research methodologies is essential and you’ll be comfortable conducting research with target customers, senior client stakeholders and a broad range of client team members.

WF is a multidisciplinary team of specialists and you’ll be comfortable working closely with colleagues across strategy and design disciplines, and you’ll have experience of working with and advising senior business leaders.

Our ideal candidate

Is detailed, focussed and rigorous in their practice
Has a natural curiosity and empathy for people
Collaborative, whilst taking responsibility for their own work
Has a solid understanding of UX/ UI design and a keen interest in business design and digital innovation

Role and responsibilities

As a practitioner...

Stakeholder engagement: you feel comfortable working alongside stakeholders to identify knowledge gaps. You enjoy working with the client team to understand and articulate opportunity areas and challenge existing assumptions - enabling them to identify new digital solutions.

Continuous service improvement: you enjoy questioning how things work today and identifying further opportunities for service improvement for the end-users

Proposing, designing and facilitating appropriate research activities: you have extensive experience in designing and facilitating qualitative and user-centred research activities, including 1:1 interviews, stakeholder workshops, focus groups, co-design research sessions and usability testing

Can work independently to manage research activities: the ability to oversee broader research activities, e.g., developing recruitment briefs/screeners, finding and liaising with recruitment partners

Rapid synthesis: you can quickly gather data and prioritise insights from both primary and secondary research. You’re happiest when working at pace to support the continuous development of services and digital experiences

Great communication skills: you feel comfortable communicating findings with both colleagues and stakeholders in an engaging and meaningful way. You’ll be an articulate presenter and be capable of writing research outputs and delivering presentations to the highest standards.

Project management skills: the ability to manage your own time effectively across both client and internal projects.

Support new business activities: you can identify new opportunities, support/lead pitches, and generate ideas and suggestions for prospective work.

What we offer

A four-day working week (full pay for five days)
A competitive salary - experience dependant
18 days holidays per year (not including public holidays), additional annual Christmas closure and a supportive maternity/paternity leave policy. Combined with our 4dw model, each team member benefits from approximately 65 non-working days each year..
A hybrid working model - typically two days per week in the studio, plus two days from home, flexible by project and workload
Private health insurance - each team member is enrolled following the successful completion of their probation period.
Annual team away-day for us to come together as a company, taking time out to learn, reflect, eat snacks and drink wine.
Quarterly company days where we come together to review the progress we are making towards our core strategy and take part in collaborative upskilling exercises for the whole team.
Personal development support to ensure each employee’s ongoing professional development
A bike to work scheme

How to apply

This is a rolling recruitment campaign so please don’t wait to submit your application. We are sifting and interviewing candidates on a weekly basis.

Send your CV, cover letter and portfolio as pdfs to jobs@wilsonfletcher.com with the title “Hire me: Senior design researcher”.

In your cover letter, please tell us a little bit about yourself, why you want to work at Wilson Fletcher and what sort of design problems you’d be interested in tackling with us.

Due to the current Covid-19 epidemic, we anticipate that all interviews will be conducted remotely. We will offer interviews at times that suit you, so if you have children, caring duties, or other circumstances affecting your availability for an interview, we’re happy to offer convenient times outside of work hours.

About Wilson Fletcher

Everyone at Wilson Fletcher is expected to solve complex problems and bring big ideas to life using a combination of strategic, analytical and creative thinking. Some of the characteristics we expect from everyone in our team include:

Collaboration

Work closely with our own team and client teams to build knowledge, insight, ideas and solutions together.
Develop close, trusted working relationships with client teams.
Work with others openly and honestly to achieve the best result possible.
Approach every challenge positively and progressively.

Communication

Exemplary and creative storytelling to articulate insights, ideas, concepts and rationale in a compelling way.
Produce strong, clear and concise verbal and visual communications.
Present, facilitate and participate confidently and personably.

Conceptual thinking

Generate breakthrough concepts by spotting opportunities and making new connections with ideas and insights.
Solve complex problems using analytical, critical and creative thinking.
Shape innovative approaches to solve complex challenges and realise large-scale opportunities in new ways.

Curiosity

Driven to learn about life in the digital age, from emerging technologies to new business models and human behaviours.
Fascinated by the subjects and challenges presented by new clients, sectors and areas of domain knowledge.
Motivated to constantly improve by reading widely, attending events, sharing knowledge and discussing relevant topics within our team.

Passion

A passion for design and its role as a critical strategic tool in shaping modern businesses.
Driven to improve the standard of our work, personally and collectively, at every opportunity.
Willing to go the extra step to ensure that every material artefact of our work is of the highest possible standard.

Realisation

Using design methodologies to transform thinking into viable solutions using an iterative, collaborative process.
Articulate ideas and strategic concepts in useful and tangible outputs.
Develop creative ways to bring a solution to life successfully and tell its story in a compelling way
Create outputs to the highest possible standards.

What’s it like working at Wilson Fletcher?

Our first 18 years have been built on a distinctive set of principles, and these have never been more important as we build the next generation of the company.

These should give you a flavour of what its like to work here

A small, senior team that clients work with closely.
A flat culture where everyone has a voice in everything we do and there are absolutely no communications boundaries
A culture more like a family than a company, where everyone is the same in the studio as the bar.
A place where doing the best possible work always comes before making as much money as possible.
A team that works together every day because collaboration always leads to better thinking.
A company where ‘we’ always, and very naturally, comes before ‘I’.
A place for people who don’t take themselves too seriously, where wine o’clock is a thing and the dog a force of nature.