Senior User Researcher – AI

Overview

• We are seeking an experienced Senior User Researcher to lead research activities for a
• Generative AI platform for a UK government department. This role focuses on understanding
• how internal government users work today, how they perceive and trust AI-assisted outputs,
• and how the platform can be designed to support safe, effective, human-in-the-loop
• decision-making — while meeting GOV.UK Service Standard expectations for user research.
• Key Responsibilities
• Research Strategy & Planning
• Define and own the user research plan across discovery, alpha, beta, and live phases,
• ensuring research activities are timed to inform key product and design decisions rather than
• validate them after the fact.

Understanding Trust & AI Interaction

• Conduct research to understand how internal government users interpret, trust, and act on
• AI-generated answers, retrieval sources, and confidence indicators, surfacing risks around
• over-reliance, misunderstanding, or mistrust of AI outputs.

Research Execution

• Plan and conduct a range of research activities — including interviews, contextual inquiry,
• usability testing, and diary studies — with civil servants and other internal government users,
• recruiting participants in line with government research standards and data handling policies.

Human-in-the-Loop Validation

• Test and validate that human-in-the-loop checkpoints and escalation flows (as defined by
• policy/technical leads) are understood and usable by real users — an execution and
• validation role, not a policy-setting one.

Synthesis & amp; Insight Sharing

• Synthesise research findings into clear, actionable insights for Product, UX, and
• Engineering teams, and present findings to senior stakeholders in a way that supports
• evidence-based decision-making.

Service Assessment Support

• Prepare and present user research evidence for GOV.UK service assessments
• (Alpha/Beta/Live), ensuring research practices and outputs meet the Service Standard's
• evidentiary requirements.
• Documentation & Handover
• Contribute research findings, methodologies, and participant insights to "Docs-as-Code"
• artifacts supporting the OKUA knowledge-transfer framework, so future teams understand
• the evidence behind design and product decisions.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Work closely with UX Designers, Product Managers, and Engineers to ensure research

findings directly inform design iterations, evaluation criteria, and roadmap prioritisation.

Required Skills & Experience

• Demonstrable experience as a User Researcher on complex, digital products, ideally

involving data-heavy or AI-assisted systems

• Strong grounding in a range of qualitative (and ideally quantitative) research

methods: interviews, usability testing, contextual inquiry, surveys

• Experience researching trust, transparency, and comprehension issues in software

presenting automated or algorithmic outputs

• Experience recruiting and conducting research with government or otherwise

sensitive/regulated user groups, following appropriate ethical and data protection

standards

• Practical experience with GOV.UK Service Standard research expectations and

preparing evidence for service assessments

• Strong synthesis and communication skills, able to translate research into clear

recommendations for varied audiences (designers, engineers, senior stakeholders)

• Comfortable working within secure, regulated environments and handling sensitive

data appropriately

Desirable Experience

• Direct experience researching LLM/RAG-based products, chatbots, or other AI-

assisted decision-making tools

• Experience delivering digital services within UK central government or the wider

public sector

• Experience designing or evaluating human-in-the-loop or escalation workflows
• Familiarity with accessibility research methods and inclusive design principles
• Exposure to research repositories, tooling, or open-source UX research communities