User Experience Researcher

We’re Pollinate. Our mission is to support SMEs as the backbone of communities and economies. We do it through platforms that unlock the value of payments data, making it easier for SMEs to manage and grow their businesses. Our products include banking platforms for some of the world’s biggest banks, sports fan apps, and marketplaces for hospitality groups. We combine the agility and flexibility of a high-growth company with the global ambitions and backing of an established brand.

We are growing fast. In under 5 years, we have built banking services on 3 continents, worked with some of the world’s major banks, and raised over $100m of funding. We are headquartered in London but have small teams in Australia, South Africa, Canada, Brazil and the US.

About the role

As a UX Researcher at Pollinate, you’ll take responsibility for ensuring our product meets the needs of our core users – SME merchants and their customers. You’ll build a deep understanding of user needs and wants and you’ll plan, facilitate and analyse UX testing and other methodologies, in order to test our work delivers on those needs. Reporting into our User Research lead, on a day to day basis you’ll be working closely with designers, product managers and engineers. You’ll develop a deep understand of the problem space we’re targeting, the solutions we’re exploring and the hypotheses that are being tested.

You’ll support our teams in identifying decision points that may benefit from testing, and define timeline, scope and methodology for potential testing. You’ll consult the teams on the most relevant research approach in each case and lead the design of each study, championing research best-practices and ensuring aspects such as the recruitment and analysis methods are appropriate. Where relevant, you’ll be conducting the research personally. Your main focus will be running usability tests with prototypes and live products to identify pain points and ensure that the current experience is constantly improving. However, you may also support on other research projects, such as user needs mapping or new product discovery. We’d love you to champion to voice of great user experience within the organisation.

We’ll use 3rd parties to provide aspects such as participant recruitment, but there will be an operational component to the role as you’ll be responsible for the end-to-end delivery of each study. You will lead the analysis and distillation of the research, helping the design and product teams to understand findings and use them to improve the product.

Responsibilities

We’re looking for researchers with a passion for understanding the user. You’ve worked in a similar role for 3 or more years and have experience designing, executing and analysing research.

Communication is key to the success of this role – verbally, but especially through output documentation, so you must have a clear style and strategic approach.

This is a self-starting role, in which you’ll have the support of relevant team-members, but also the autonomy to define your own working style and outputs.

Essential skills required:

• In depth understanding of UX/UI research
• Solid experience with qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, co-creation labs etc., but quantitative experience is also a plus
• Experience with UX research tools such as Optimal Workshop, UserTesting, Userlytics, SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics or other similar tools
• Ability to aggregate knowledge to help the wider business understand user needs, journeys, personas etc.
• Experience with remote and in-person user testing methodologies
• Able to manage daily operation of experience design research capability, plans and schedules
• Ability to establish appropriate ways of working to manage demand, set expectations and provide effective operation
• Ability to assess business needs and goals and prioritise work accordingly
• Collaborating with other research functions and related teams across the organisation
• Experience working in a fast paced, agile environment

Advantageous:

• Experience and understanding of small business owners, fintech, payments or banking

What we stand for

• We believe we are better together when we listen, engage and support each other, we want you to bring your expertise and experience to work every day.
• We are passionate about what we are doing and want you to share this with us, enjoy your time with us, stay calm under pressure and bring positive energy to the team.
• We are all on a journey together, we want your ambition and flexible mind set to embrace the twists and turns as we grow as a business.

Your wellbeing and professional growth is important to us. If you join Pollinate, you can expect:

• Benefits including up to 20% bonus, pension, life assurance, health insurance, and share options in Pollinate through our CSOP scheme.
• Access to the mental health platform, Unmind, and a weekly Yoga class to support your individual wellbeing journey.
• A dedicated growth and opportunity initiative, ‘GO!’ focused on empowering and inspiring you to push yourself and your career forward. – this includes access to LinkedIn Learning, A Cloud Guru, an internal coaching and mentoring programme, and a series of sessions with external experts covering a range of topics, such as leadership and intrapreneurship, and more
• Flexible working – we are implementing hybrid working where our hub is used for team or collaboration meetings, company get togethers or when you feel like coming to the office.
• Regular social activities – these are happening IRL (in real life) again.

Pollinate’s platform

Our platform has picked up multiple industry awards, including:

• ‘Banking Innovation of the Year’ at the 2020 Future Digital Awards
• ‘Innovation Frontier’ award at the Celent Model Bank 2020 Awards through our work with NatWest’s Payit
• ‘Best payment industry newcomer’ at the Card and Payment Awards for Tyl by NatWest platform
• We’re also shortlisted in the Women in Tech Employer Awards 2020

As part of Pollinate, you’ll be working with experts across payments, technology, customer experience, and financial services, supported by a world-class network of partners. Join us to be a key part of a team that’s changing the future of payments, with the freedom to make your mark. Together, we’ll push the boundaries of what’s possible with payment enabled merchant services for SMEs around the world.

This Job Description covers the main areas of your responsibilities – it is not an exhaustive list.

We can only accept candidates who have the right to work in the UK.