Research officer jobs in London

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.

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 us.

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.)