User Researcher

About Us

The Financial Times is one of the world’s leading news organisations, globally recognised for its authority, integrity and accuracy, with a mission to deliver quality information and services worldwide.

At the FT, curiosity thrives and ambitious thinking is rewarded. Here, you’re given the chance to reach millions, create work that matters and deliver impartial journalism in a polarised world.

In our warm, collaborative culture, you’ll connect with a diverse community of experts who support your growth, career aspirations and wellbeing.

Your future at the FT will be filled with opportunities that challenge and inspire you. With no fixed path, you’ll discover new skills and forge a career that can take you anywhere.

Build a newsworthy career at the FT.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

The Role

We’re looking for a User Researcher to join the Product Design & User Research team in our London Office.

You’ll be working on our Experience team using a wide range of research methods to help us get a deeper understanding of our audiences.

You’ll work alongside three fully empowered squads of designers, product managers, engineers and the Newsroom with support from and access to relevant stakeholders from around the FT such as data and marketing.

You’ll help deliver end-to-end product experiences, from exploratory research into opportunity definition, from ideation into concepting, from testing into shipping, measuring and iterating.

You’ll receive regular guidance and support from your squads, your line manager, our Director of Product Research & Design, and of course the whole research team. We work hard to foster a safe environment where we share and discuss our work proactively, to inspire, support and guide each other.

Key Responsibilities

Planning and prioritising. You'll have an equal stake in your cross functional teams direction, working together to plan and prioritise initiatives based on company OKRs.
Collaborating with product managers, designers, engineers etc through all stages of the discovery and development process to create a shared understanding of customer needs.
Researching and learning about users. Designing, planning and conducting relevant generative research activities suited for the objectives and the timelines of the team. Uncovering the behaviours and motivations of customers, using relevant methodologies.
Empathy and experience mapping. Understanding user mindsets, motivations and expectations. Mapping experiences, journeys and flows, to help us unearth and prioritise pain points and opportunities. Taking the team along with you and offering PMs a higher level picture to make more strategic decisions.
Ideating, iterating and testing. Working with teams to help evolve ideas into concepts, to shape these concepts with research and iterate based on the learnings.
Synthesising learnings and sharing insights creatively. Taking what you've learnt and disseminating knowledge throughout your squad and the business.
Evolving! We strive to continually improve. Evolving our process by adding new techniques and abandoning obsolete ones. Evolving our product until we achieve objectives, rather than stopping once we’ve shipped.

Required Skills and Experience

We welcome applications from people who can demonstrate strong end-to-end user research competencies.

You’ll have shipped multiple features and iterations perhaps across several products. You’ve been a user researcher for product teams for 3 years or more.

Proven research skills, experience of using a range of methods and techniques to deliver insights that impact product strategy and direction.
Clear communication and presentation skills, able to tell a compelling customer narrative with qual and quant results.
Good initiative to solve problems, manage workload and set expectations.
Strong collaboration skills, knowing how to contribute and influence through finding common ground and building rapport with team members.
Natural curiosity, a desire to understand how and why people use digital products and how the FT can best meet their needs.

Career progression and growth

We have a transparent, measureable progression framework, which will outline all of the skills FT user researchers need, and detail on how to progress in each skill category. We will use this as a basis for your biannual reviews, where you’ll self assess against the progression framework, track progression, and agree areas of focus with your line manager.

We invest in our people to allow them to grow both personally and professionally whilst working at The FT. We offer a variety of ways in which you can progress your career with us, some of which are highlighted below:

Career coaching - Career coaching is time spent focused on you and how you can achieve your career aspirations.
Mentoring programme - The mentoring programme aims to connect people across the business to support professional and personal growth through knowledge sharing and guidance.
Learning and development - The FT offers a host of learning and development opportunities that will not only help you build the skills you need to grow in your profession or field, but will also help you improve your own personal development, with courses such as self-coaching, productivity, presentation confidence, research techniques and much more.

What’s in it for You?

Our benefits vary by location but we are committed to providing best-in-class perks across all our offices. These include generous annual leave, medical cover, inclusive parental leave packages, subsidised gym memberships and opportunities to give back to the community. Full details of our benefits are available here: https://aboutus.ft.com/careers/benefits.

We currently operate a hybrid model which requires staff to work onsite 50% of the time, subject to role requirements & regular review. While flexible working requests will be considered, not all patterns are suitable for all roles. We believe this balanced approach supports flexibility and protects our culture, making collaboration and communication easier, building stronger relationships and team cohesion, and supporting peer learning. We reserve discretion on reasonable notice to change this approach either generally or for specific individuals or teams.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email talent@ft.com and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Further Information

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.

Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all.

Please beware of fraudulent job postings and offers claiming to be from the Financial Times. All legitimate opportunities will direct you to apply through the official Financial Times careers site, and the FT will never ask for financial information, payments, or referrals to third parties during the hiring process. If you have any concerns about the legitimacy of a job posting or suspect any scam activity, please contact talent@ft.com.

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