Title: UX Research Operations Specialist

Location: Manchester 3 days in office, 2 days remote

Salary: From £42,230

Who we are:

interactive investor is an award-winning investment platform that puts its customers in control of their financial future.

We’ve been helping investors for nearly 30 years. We’ve seen market highs and lows and been resilient throughout. We’re now the UK’s number one flat-fee investment platform, with assets under administration approaching £80 billion and over 500,000 customers.

For a simple, flat monthly fee we provide a secure home for your pensions, ISAs and investments. We offer a wide choice of over 20,000 UK and international investment options, including shares, funds, trusts and ETFs.

We also bring impartial, expert content from our award-winning financial journalists, highly engaged community of investors, and daily newsletters and insights.

Purpose of the role:

The Research Operations (ResOps) Specialist enables the UX Research team to work efficiently, ethically, consistently, and in line with regulatory requirements. The role focuses on improving research workflows, participant operations, tooling, governance, collaboration, and overall operational maturity.

The ResOps Specialist identifies and removes friction in the research process, allowing researchers to focus on generating meaningful insights, while ensuring that the systems, tools, governance, and practices supporting research are robust, scalable, and sustainable.

Working closely with UX Researchers, the UXR Manager, UXR Principal, Product teams, Legal, Compliance, Data Privacy, and other stakeholders, the role supports research effectiveness, operational consistency, participant governance, AI adoption, insight management, and scalable ways of working across the UX Research function.

This role does not conduct all research activities or own research strategy. Instead, it supports the UX Research function by improving the operational foundations—such as workflows, tooling, governance, participant management, and documentation—that enable high-quality research at scale.

Requirements

Research Workflow & Operational Enablement

• Analyse current research workflows and identify inefficiencies, risks, or operational bottlenecks.
• Define, implement, and continuously improve scalable research operations processes and standards.
• Create scalable frameworks for research intake, prioritisation, participant management, scheduling, and delivery support.
• Support research planning, coordination, recruitment timelines, and operational readiness across studies.
• Work directly with UX Researchers to identify workflow friction, tooling challenges, and operational improvements within day-to-day delivery.
• Help improve collaboration and reduce friction across UX, Product, Engineering, Compliance, Legal, Customer Service, and wider business teams.
• Lead and embed continuous improvement initiatives across research operations, governance, tooling, and ways of working.
• Support onboarding for new researchers by ensuring access, tools, guidance, documentation, and operational processes are clear and easy to follow.

• Research Tools, Systems, AI & Insight Management
  Own and optimise the research tool ecosystem (e.g. UserTesting, User Interviews, Usabilla, Content Square, repository systems, transcription tools, or similar platforms).
• Manage tool access, licences, onboarding, and usage guidance.
• Support UX Researchers with tooling, repository management, recruitment coordination, workflow optimisation, and operational best practice guidance.
• Identify and introduce new tools, automations, or operational improvements that increase research efficiency, governance, and quality.
• Actively identify, evaluate, test, and introduce AI tools, automations, and emerging technologies that improve efficiency, reduce repetitive manual tasks, accelerate synthesis, support analysis workflows, enhance collaboration, and improve operational scalability across UX Research.
• Support the safe, scalable, and effective adoption of AI across research workflows and practices.
• Keep awareness of emerging industry tooling, AI capabilities, research operations trends, and operational best practices within UX Research and digital product delivery.
• Manage and maintain UX Research collaboration, documentation, repository, and knowledge management platforms (e.g. Dovetail, Confluence, SharePoint, Loop, Airtable, or similar tools).
• Ensure research documentation, templates, consent forms, governance resources, playbooks, and operational guidance remain accurate, organised, accessible, and up to date.
• Establish and maintain standards for repository structure, tagging, naming conventions, archive management, participant data handling, and research hygiene across the UX Research environment.
• Regularly review and maintain repositories, research assets, templates, recordings, transcripts, and supporting materials to ensure consistency, scalability, regulatory compliance and ease of use.
• Help reduce duplication, outdated insights, fragmented documentation, and operational clutter across research tooling and knowledge management systems.
• Support teams in maintaining clear visibility of research activities, access to findings and decisions, and tracking impact.
• Ensure research assets, repositories, templates, and documentation remain structured, organised, and easy to navigate.
• Help establish scalable governance and operational standards across the research environment.
• Act as the operational custodian of the UX Research working environment, ensuring tools, documentation, repositories, participant operations, and collaboration spaces remain scalable, maintainable, and easy to navigate.

Participant Operations, Governance & Compliance

• Support participant recruitment, scheduling, communications, incentives, and coordination across research activities.
• Help establish scalable participant management processes and operational standards.
• Support consent management, GDPR processes, privacy requirements, and research governance practices.
• Partner with Legal, Compliance, and Data Privacy teams to ensure research operations align with organisational and regulatory standards.
• Help maintain participant databases, research panels, recruitment suppliers, and operational records.
• Support operational governance around recording management, storage, retention, and secure handling of research data.
• Help reduce operational risk and improve consistency across research practices and participant handling.

Supporting Research Delivery, Craft & Operational Enablement

Supporting the UXR Manager

• Support the UXR Manager in improving team workflows, research operations, planning, operational consistency, and team enablement.
• Help reduce delivery friction, improve collaboration, and enable more effective ways of working across squads and teams.
• Assist with operational planning, rituals, reporting, tooling coordination, and research enablement activities.

Supporting the UXR Principal

• Support the UXR Principal in embedding research standards, consistency, accessibility considerations, governance practices, and insight quality across the research team.
• Help operationalise best practices, frameworks, synthesis approaches, critiques, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Assist in scaling research maturity, insight visibility, AI adoption, and cross-team research alignment.

Cross-Team Collaboration & Communication

• Improve collaboration between UX Research, UX Design, Product, Engineering, Data, Customer Service, Compliance, and other business areas.
• Partner closely with UX Researchers to improve collaboration, communication, visibility, and operational effectiveness across squads and teams.
• Establish clear research intake, communication, participant management, and insight-sharing processes.
• Facilitate operational rituals such as research critiques, showcases, retrospectives, repository governance sessions, AI knowledge sharing, and planning sessions.
• Act as a connector across teams to reduce duplication, confusion, and operational inefficiencies.
• Support transparency, alignment, and visibility across UX Research initiatives and delivery.

Metrics, Insights & Continuous Improvement

• Define and track operational metrics for the research team (e.g. recruitment efficiency, study throughput, repository usage, operational effectiveness, insight adoption).
• Identify trends, risks, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement.
• Run regular retrospectives on tooling, workflows, governance, AI adoption, participant operations, and operational effectiveness.
• Support reporting and operational insights that help scale the UX Research function effectively.
• Help establish scalable operational foundations that support future team growth.

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Experience working in a UX Research, operations, product, service design, or digital delivery environment.
• Strong understanding of UX Research workflows, participant operations, governance, and cross-functional collaboration models.
• Experience improving operational processes, systems, tooling, governance, or workflows.
• Excellent organisational, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Strong stakeholder management and collaboration abilities.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and proactively identify operational improvements.

Desirable

• Experience with UX Research tools such as Dovetail, UserTesting, Maze, Qualtrics, or similar platforms.
• Exposure to participant recruitment, repository management, or research governance.
• Background in operations, project management, service design, or delivery enablement.
• Experience working in cross-functional product teams.
• Familiarity with accessibility considerations, GDPR, consent management, or research ethics.
• Awareness and interest in AI tooling, workflow automation, and emerging technologies within research and digital delivery environments.

Key Behaviours

• Proactive and improvement-focused.
• Comfortable challenging inefficient processes and ways of working.
• Able to lead change management initiatives effectively and empathetically.
• Curious about emerging technologies, AI capabilities, and operational innovation.
• Systems thinker who connects people, tools, workflows, governance, and delivery outcomes.
• Collaborative and facilitative, not just task-oriented.
• Focused on enabling others to do their best work.
• Adaptable, organised, and comfortable working in evolving environments.

Success Measures

• Reduced friction and clearer workflows for the UX Research team.
• Improved consistency and adoption of research standards, governance, and operational practices.
• Increased adoption and effective use of AI and workflow automation across the UX Research function.
• Faster, more predictable, and scalable research operations and delivery support.
• Positive feedback from researchers and cross-functional partners.
• Improved collaboration, visibility, repository management, and operational maturity across UX Research.
• Strong operational support for participant management, governance, tooling, insight management, and scalable ways of working across the UX Research function.

Benefits

• Group Personal Pension Plan – 8% employer contribution and 4% employee contribution
• Life Assurance and Group Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance – Provided by Bupa
• 25 Days Annual Leave, plus bank holidays
• Staff Discounts on our investment products
• Personal & Well-being Fund – Supporting your physical and mental wellness
• Retail Discounts – Savings at a wide range of high street and online retailers
• Voluntary Flexible Benefits – Tailor your benefits to suit your lifestyle

Please Note: We will do our utmost efforts to respond to all applicants. However, due to the high volume of applications we're currently receiving, if you haven't been contacted within 30 days of application, please consider unsuccessful.

interactive investor operates in accordance with the UK Equality Act 2010. We welcome applications from individuals of all ages, disabilities, gender identities, marital status, pregnancy/maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. We are committed to treating all applicants fairly and making reasonable adjustments where needed to support disabled applicants. We actively prevent all forms of discrimination, harassment, and victimisation—whether direct, indirect, associative, or perceptive