Research and Service Design Lead (18 Month FTC)

(This is a hybrid role, and it requires travel to our Cardiff office regularly)

The Research & Service Design team at Admiral oversees the end-to-end journeys of our insurance customers and ensures we engage with people in innovative ways and deliver as much value as possible.

We work to make the business work; creating frameworks and tools needed to understand user needs and design impactful, user-centred products and services. This role offers opportunities to work across a variety of projects with a growing level of responsibility and influence as your skills develop.

As a Lead UX Researcher and Service Designer at Admiral, you will have a dual role: combining hands-on research/ service design activities with team leadership responsibilities. You'll be at the forefront, playing a critical role in both guiding research directions and nurturing a strong, collaborative team culture. Working collaboratively within multidisciplinary teams, you’ll ensure the delivery of high-quality outputs. Your contributions will span a range of activities, from uncovering insights about user behaviour to designing services that are seamless, inclusive, and impactful.

What you’ll do

• Work closely with business stakeholders, product owners, developers, and designers to foster a culture of cross-functional collaboration and respect.
• Define, plan, and execute user research and service design activities, including supporting the work of less experienced colleagues helping them develop their skills and expertise.
• Define metrics and methodologies to measure and improve users’ experiences.
• Deliver compelling insights, stories and artifacts to help drive evidence-based product and design decisions.
• Mentor and support less experienced Researchers and Services Designers, offering guidance, feedback, and support to foster a culture or learning and collaboration.
• Incorporate inclusive research and design practices, ensuring Admiral’s services meet the needs of diverse user groups, including those with additional needs or from underrepresented communities.
• Lead the development of service design strategies that bridge customer needs with business objectives, using ecosystem mapping, journey mapping, service blueprints, prototyping, and systems thinking.
• Tackle problems that require an understanding of complex technical constraints, e.g. legacy systems and regulatory compliance, while working to guide both near-term improvements and long-term service investments.
• Facilitate workshops and stakeholder sessions, ensuring alignment between business goals and customer experiences.
• Develop and innovate on our mixed-methods user research and service design practice, contributing to the wider Insights community at Admiral.

Key Skills Required

• You have 6 years industry experience in User Research and/or Service Design, with a strong foundation in at least one and working knowledge of the other.
• You have leadership experience and demonstrate the skills of empowering a high-performing team.
• Hold a degree in Psychology, Human Computer Interaction, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Cognitive Sciences, or equivalent practical experience.*
• You have extensive expertise in qualitative and quantitative research methods, and leading both evaluative and formative research.
• Comfortable with planning, prioritising, conducting, analysing and communicating research in a variety of contexts.
• Effective communication and storytelling skills, capable of advocating for research and design impact at all levels of an organisation.
• Demonstrated experience leading end-to-end research and/or service design projects from discovery to implementation.
• Experience conducting research in complex problem spaces such as customer service, enterprise solutions, or privacy.
• Experience in Service Design methodologies, including service blueprinting, experience mapping and iterative prototyping.

• This is a general guideline. We recognise that strong researchers/ service designers come from a wide variety of career paths and backgrounds — please apply if you feel you’d be a good fit.

Please note - we may close this vacancy early if we receive lots of applications or business priorities change.

Admiral: Where You Can

We take pride in being a diverse and inclusive business. It's a place where you can Be You, and show up as you are. We’re committed to fostering a people-first culture where everyone is accepted, supported, and empowered to be brilliant. You can, Grow And Progress at a pace and direction that suits you, Make A Difference for our customers and each other, and Share in Our Future with all colleagues eligible for up to £3,600 of free shares each year after one year of service.

Everyone receives 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) when they join us, increasing the longer you stay with us, up to a maximum of 38 days (including bank holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to an additional five days of annual leave.

We’re proud of our people-first culture. In fact, we've been recognised as a Great Place to Work for Women, a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, and an overall Great Place to Work for over 25 years! We’re fully committed to making sure your progression is not slowed or halted by barriers related to race, gender, age, sexuality or any of the protected characteristics.

Our fantastic benefits make sure our colleagues have a great work-life balance; You can view some of our other key benefits here.

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