Senior Researcher

Overview of the Senior Researcher Role at Barclays UK

Join us as a Senior Researcher within the Barclays UK Decision Intelligence team. In this pivotal role, you will be responsible for leading end-to-end mixed-methods market and user experience research. Your insights will directly inform strategic decisions, helping to uncover complex challenges and opportunities within customer journeys. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to develop innovative propositions and ensure holistic insights are integrated into experience and organizational strategy, shaping direction at multiple levels to create value for customers, colleagues, the wider community, and Barclays.

Required Experience for Senior Researcher

• Mixed-method research: Proven ability to apply both quantitative and qualitative methodologies based on project needs, including in-depth interviews, focus groups, diary studies, segmentation, and conjoint studies.
• High-quality research programs: Experience designing and delivering robust research programs that effectively meet both business and customer needs.
• Broad research knowledge: Applying expertise in a wide range of research and user testing disciplines to design and deliver world-class products and services.
• Accountability and critical thinking: Actively taking responsibility for dissecting complex research questions, challenging current thinking to continuously act in the best interest of customers and Barclays.
• Consumer behavior understanding: Demonstrating a holistic grasp of consumer behavior and the ability to drive behavior change.
• Customer focus: Understanding customers' personal context and mental models, skilled at interpreting verbal and non-verbal cues into clear customer needs and wants.
• Commercial and strategic thinking: Understanding Barclays' strategy and goals, applying insights from various data sources to provide value-generating recommendations.
• Communication and influence: Delivering clear, targeted messages to your audience, successfully challenging the status quo at all levels to drive brilliant Customer Outcomes within Barclays UK.

Highly Valued Skills

• Digital transformation: Understanding how evolving technologies can drive market-leading digital adoption and transformation for Barclays customers and the business; confidence in adopting new methods to automate and augment research processes.
• Stakeholder management: Building strong relationships with senior stakeholders, cross-functional teams, and peers by consulting on business problems and providing excellent expectation management throughout project delivery.
• Analytics tools proficiency: Comfortable using Excel or equivalent analytics tools, alongside AI tools, to analyze complex quantitative and qualitative data and draw confident conclusions on statistical significance.

Purpose of the Role

The core purpose of this role is to lead the collection and analysis of research into customer needs, experiences, and interactions. This will directly support the creation of intuitive, useful, and innovative experiences and communications for our 20 million UK customers, ultimately embedding the 'Customer Voice' at the heart of everything Barclays does.

Key Accountabilities

• Deliver end-to-end research programs that are highly synergistic with other research and analytics activities across the business, including Design/UX Research, Colleague research, quantitative research, and CX tracking.
• Collaborate with various departments such as Design, Product, Channel, Marketing, Transformation, and Technology to brainstorm innovative design concepts, ensuring research findings are integrated throughout the innovation cycle.
• Develop and test prototypes, mock-ups, or value propositions to support the analysis of concept development and gather usability feedback from customers and internal stakeholders.
• Monitor emerging technologies, industry trends, design best practices, societal changes, and economic trends that may impact the customer landscape and influence Barclays' strategic decisions.
• Utilize data analytics tools to extract insights from market research, customer surveys, and feedback sessions to identify new opportunities and understand evolving customer needs.
• Manage all risks related to the Insight process, particularly Data Privacy risk, including identification, mitigation strategy development, and alignment with the Chief Controls Office and Data Privacy Compliance.
• Manage all research programs, encompassing oversight of colleagues and their performance, implementation of departmental goals and objectives, and ensuring departmental efficiency and effectiveness.

Assistant Vice President Expectations

As an Assistant Vice President, you will advise and influence decision-making, contribute to policy development, and take responsibility for operational effectiveness. This role involves close collaboration with other functions/business divisions.

You will lead a team performing complex tasks, leveraging well-developed professional knowledge and skills to deliver work that impacts the entire business function. Responsibilities include setting objectives, coaching employees, appraising performance, and determining reward outcomes. For individual contributors, this entails leading collaborative assignments, guiding team members through structured assignments, identifying the need for other areas of specialization, and proposing new directions for projects by combining cross-functional methodologies.

You will consult on complex issues, providing advice to People Leaders, identify ways to mitigate risk, develop new policies/procedures for control and governance, and take ownership for managing risk and strengthening controls. The role requires an understanding of how different areas coordinate to achieve organizational objectives, engaging in complex analysis of data from multiple internal and external sources to solve problems creatively, and effectively communicating complex or sensitive information to influence stakeholders and achieve desired outcomes.

Barclays Values and Mindset

All colleagues are expected to demonstrate Barclays' Values: Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence, and Stewardship – guiding our moral compass. Additionally, you will embody the Barclays Mindset: Empower, Challenge, and Drive – our operating manual for behavior.

Key skills/competency

• Mixed-method Research
• User Experience Research
• Quantitative Analysis
• Qualitative Research
• Customer Insight
• Strategic Decision Making
• Stakeholder Management
• Digital Transformation
• Data Analytics
• Risk Management