Lead User Researcher, US

Location: Los Angeles

Monzo is a bank that lives on your phone. Our mission is to make money work for everyone: to make our customers effortlessly financially savvy with smart features, unexpectedly friendly service, and a relentless focus on what people genuinely want and need. Our net promoter score of +80 is more than 2x that of other banks, and we are the fastest-growing bank in the UK.

Monzo better resembles a fast-paced tech startup than a traditional bank – we move fast, ship things every day, and develop products iteratively. We work in interdisciplinary product squads, and design plays a big part in driving our product vision. But we are also very serious about the safety of our customers’ money and their trust in us, and we believe this starts with our internal culture. We default to transparency both internally and externally, and we involve our community in everything we do. We prize a diverse team as a strength: everyone is welcome at Monzo and is encouraged to do the best work of their lives.

We’re planning to launch in the US in the next few months, and we’re looking for a seasoned and empathetic design-thinker, to help us deliver the best banking experience possible in the US. We have big ambitions in the US and the team will grow quickly, but as the first US-based researcher you will be joining at a formative and exciting time. This is a rare opportunity to shape the product and our launch, and you need to be comfortable wearing many hats and collaborating across many disciplines.

We work closely with Product Managers and Product Designers to generate insight to fuel ideas and then evaluate design solutions. We’re quick to adopt better tools and processes, so you’ll be more than welcome to contribute all the good practices you’ve used before.

As part of your role, you'll:

• Work closely with Product Managers, Product Designers, Engineers and other User Researchers to generate hypotheses and plans for high-impact research that helps us better understand our existing and potential customers and how to create a better product that solves their problems and meets their needs.
• Plan and ran qualitative studies, including field observations and interviews, remote and in-person usability studies for existing and future products.
• Collaborate closely with our analytics team to make sure our qualitative insights are also enhanced by robust quantitative analysis whenever possible.
• Communicate research findings to inform business decisions through the best possible means ranging from presentations, workshops, reports or whatever mechanism gets the insights into our decision-making.
• Lead the research for your squads, suggesting the best approach and methods to use so we’re capturing the right insights that help us grow and develop our product in our mission to Make Money Work For Everyone.

You should apply if:

• You’ve got lots of hands-on experience with exploratory and evaluative qualitative research methods, appreciating their limitations and when to apply them appropriately.
• You can independently run research projects, from planning, scoping, running the sessions, analysing and creating deliverables.
• You can run user testing with your eyes closed, regardless of the setting. You should be comfortable in a lab as well as stopping people in the street for quick feedback or setting up remote tests.
• You're happy user testing on mobile. We’re a mobile-only bank, so if you’ve got experience with both iOS and Android we’ll love you even more.
• You appreciate robust research study design, but can also consider practical constraints and business goals – you understand what 'just enough research' means.
• You’re a strong communicator and facilitator. You’re able to tell a story so your audience will want to listen to and zoom into detail when needed to help solutions come to life.
• You value collaboration and are at your best when you’re part of a team.
• You are flexible in your approach and embrace a challenge; you might need to come up with new ways of answering research questions quickly and communicating the results in a memorable, impactful way.

Nice to have

• If you have experience in banking/ financial services in the US, that would be a real plus
• You’re familiar with quantitative research and understand metrics.