User Research Officer

The National Lottery Community Fund

United Kingdom

Hybrid

Expires: Expiring in less than 3 weeks

Full time

£27,000 - £30,000 per year

Job summary

We are recruiting for three fixed-term User Research Officer roles for our Digital Team. Two 23-month contracts and one 12-month contract.

This is an exciting opportunity to join The National Lottery Community Fund, and develop your skills as a User Research Officer within a multi-disciplinary team.

Job description

You’ll conduct user research to help us understand the needs of both the people who apply for our funding, and our colleagues who manage that funding. Your insights will inform the design of new systems and improvement of existing ones, ensuring that we make changes based on real user needs.

Working within our Digital Team, you’ll also have opportunities to collaborate with and learn from a thriving group of designers and researchers who love sharing knowledge and experience. We’ll offer you support to develop your research and design skills, and opportunities to take part in training and communities of practice.

You’ll need some practical experience of qualitative research methods, and of designing and running research. This could be from working in user research or user experience design. But we’d also welcome applications from people with similar experience from professional work, academic work, or study in fields like:

human-computer interaction
user-centred design
psychology
ethnography
social research

The responsibilities of the job include:

Designing and running user research to help us improve our existing digital services and design new ones.
Recruiting participants for research.
Analysing qualitative research data.
Presenting findings to Digital team colleagues, and stakeholders from the wider organisation.
Collaborating in a multidisciplinary team, and supporting colleagues’ design work by helping them understand what users need.
Contributing to our user research and design community – taking part in team meetings and providing feedback on prototypes and other design work working in a collaborative and inclusive way.

Interview Details:

Interview Date: Virtual interview – 23rd or 24th February

Location: Hybrid working, anywhere in the UK. Choice of home or office working (offices in Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Exeter, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle, or Newtown). Some in person meetings, including quarterly away days across UK locations.

We’ll talk to you about where you are based and your working pattern if you get the job.

We will be hosting a briefing session on: Tuesday 27th January 2026, from 11am to 11:45am. To register or ask any questions please email: recruitment@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk

Person specification

How to apply

Upload your CV in Word format and write a supporting statement of up to 1000 words. We'll use the following criteria to score your application – so you should show how you meet them in your supporting statement.

Essential Criteria:

Passionate and knowledgeable about user-centred design, and digital ways of working.
Experience of designing and running user research or other qualitative research studies, and a good understanding of when and how to use different research methods.
Experience of analysing qualitative research, and turning it into clear insights that others can understand and use.
Confident in explaining research findings to others, verbally or in writing.
Good at collaborating, involving colleagues in research activities and contributing to shared planning.

Desirable Criteria:

Experience of standing up for the needs and perspectives of users.
A good understanding of inclusion and accessibility for digital services.
Knowledge of agile working and the roles in a multidisciplinary digital team.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Communities in the UK come in all shapes and sizes. National Lottery funding is for everyone – therefore, we are committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and we work hard to ensure our funding reaches where it is needed.

We also believe our people should represent the communities, organisations and individuals we work with. That’s why The National Lottery Community Fund is committed to being an inclusive employer and a great place to work. We recognise and celebrate the fact that our people come from diverse backgrounds. We positively welcome applications from people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people with disabilities or longstanding health conditions, people who are LGBTQ+, and people from different socio-economic and educational backgrounds, as well as people of all ages.

As a Disability Confident Employer, we take a proactive approach in making reasonable adjustments, if needed, throughout the recruitment process and during employment. (This can be related to a physical and mental health condition.)

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £27,000, The National Lottery Community Fund contributes £7,821 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.

A full list of our benefits can be found on our website using the link:

Generous Civil Service Pension Scheme
Flexible working
Enhanced paid maternity/ paternity leave
Paid volunteering leave
Season ticket loan

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

Please click the link to apply and upload your supporting statement (1000) and CV when you are submitting your online application to us via our vacancies page. Any application sent to recruitment with your attached documents will not be considered.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

UK nationals
nationals of the Republic of Ireland
nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Salary range

£27,000 - £30,000 per year