The Role 

As a Lead User Researcher at Tangity, you’ll play a critical role in shaping meaningful, accessible public services that deliver lasting value to users. You’ll lead research initiatives across the full delivery lifecycle—helping agile teams validate assumptions, reduce delivery risk, and prioritise work based on real user needs. 

You will work flexibly, sometimes autonomously, and sometimes collaborating with designers, BAs, developers, and product managers to ensure evidence drives decisions at every stage. You’ll also contribute to service strategy, guide team ways of working, and foster a user-first mindset across the wider project and client organisation. 

You’ll be adopting and following the GDS Service Standard  

Plan, lead, and deliver user research for public services across Discovery, Alpha, Beta, and Live phases 

Advocate the value of user research and wider UCD practices to teams and stakeholders with varying levels of research/UCD maturity 

Apply a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods—e.g. depth interviews, usability testing, contextual inquiry, surveys—to surface behavioural insights 

Establish and maintain lightweight feedback loops with target user groups, ensuring continued insight into live service usage and evolving needs 

Synthesise research findings into clear, actionable outputs such as problem statements, user journeys, personas, and pain point maps 

Translate insights into backlog priorities and design recommendations that inform product strategy and roadmap decisions 

Collaborate with multi-disciplinary agile teams including roles such as: BA, Product Owner and Interaction Designers to ensure proposed solutions are evidence-based and grounded in actual user behaviour 

Support design iteration and decision-making by testing early service concepts, prototypes, and touchpoints 

Communicate findings to varied audiences—through visual artefacts, research reports, presentations, and stakeholder playbacks 

Facilitate design and research workshops, playback sessions, and show-and-tells to drive cross-functional understanding and alignment 

Advocating for and embedding a user-first culture across agile teams and clients by encouraging regular exposure to user feedback and service impact 

Ensure inclusive and accessible research approaches that align with GDS and WCAG standards 

Mentor junior researchers and help shape Tangity’s research practice, contributing to tools, templates, and team capability building 

Participate in Tangity’s research community of practice 

Responsibilities 

Provide research insights to inform tactical and strategic design solutions 

Proactively contribute to client meetings, presentations, and workshops 

Mentor and guide team members, ensuring design standards are maintained 

Foster client relationships by anticipating needs, presenting recommendations in a compelling way, and driving outcomes 

Stakeholder Management - building strong relationships with stakeholders, influencing decision-making, and confidently communicating research insights and recommendations. 

Expected Behaviours 

Demonstrates strong ownership and leadership across design deliverables, ensuring alignment with project goals 

Anticipates client needs and addresses design challenges, delivering proactive solutions 

Exhibits excellent communication, both with clients and within the team, and is a trusted design voice in meetings 

Takes responsibility for fostering a collaborative and productive team environment, including mentoring and upskilling peers 

Be ethically considerate in research, which can include handling personal information and dealing with sensitive subjects