User Researcher

Expected Start Date: January 2021

Contract Type: Fixed-Term Contract for 3-4 months (with the opportunity to become permanent)

Mach49 is a Growth Incubator for global businesses. We partner with our clients to disrupt existing markets and create new ones through a strategic mix of incubations, corporate venturing and ecosystem creation.

We work side-by-side with client’s intrapreneurial teams to take an idea (market or product concept) through customer validation, solution ideation, and prototype testing; then to the development of a business model and go-to-market plan that the client teams will launch. Along the way we instill lean startup, design-thinking, and agile development mindsets to our client teams as they build out their businesses. Our process is highly customer-centric, relying on customer development research as the linchpin to our overall methodology.

If you are a passionate, curious, motivated, qualitative research professional, we want to talk to you. Mach49 seeks a Customer Development Researcher to lead teams through the customer centered research process throughout the incubation.

The Role                                              

You will enable client teams to learn deeply about their potential customers, uncover pain, and vet early solution ideas. We call this customer development rather than user research, because the purpose of the work is to develop a pipeline of potential customers to pilot the team’s solutions with.

Our typical research process involves open ended interviews, storyboards and prototypes, as well as custom research to validate/ invalidate hypotheses and better understand risks. This includes:

• Working with client teams to leverage the Mach49 user research process
• Coaching teams on tactics and best practices for conducting effective customer development research
• Developing research and testing strategies and logistics for entrepreneurial teams by assisting in the creation of interviewee recruitment strategies and tactics, interview scripts, storyboards, and prototypes
• Working with Senior Researchers to devise custom research strategies
• Leading research synthesis and translating observations into findings
  

Other Key Responsibilities                                          

• Partnering with designers on the creation of testing stimuli in various degrees of fidelity
• Providing thought leadership on Mach49 research methodologies such as piloting new tactics, where appropriate, for incorporation into the Mach49 user research toolkit
• Jumping in and helping out colleagues on other teams, as necessary
  

Experience

Mach49 is a unique company; as business co-founders with our clients, we are neither like a consulting firm, nor like working at an in-house company. To be successful, we have found the following characteristics to be beneficial:

• Interest in a wide variety of global business topics
• Comfort within a fast-paced, collaborative environment with client teams who may be initially uncomfortable with ambiguity
• Desire to mentor others (including non-researchers) along with the means and patience to do so
• Ability to pivot, when necessary
• Adept at delivering high-quality research outcomes with time and budget constraints
• Supportive of colleagues when they need a hand to keep projects running smoothly
• Politically savvy when working with clients
• Skilled at knowing when to lead versus when to collaborate
• A curious mind and the ability to make connections between diverse fields and industries
• Willingness to wear different hats and learn/deploy new skills as an entrepreneurial environment requires
  

Requirements

• 5+ years of relevant work experience
• A mix of the following:
• Extensive experience of discovery research in a commercial context – applying research methods to conceive, validate and explore a variety of solutions to customer problems
• Experience of recruiting customers for interviews with a strong ability to deliver interviewees into the schedule, including willingness to approach via multiple channels, including phone
• Background with experimental methods (with an emphasis on qualitative research)
• Background in psychology, experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, HCI, or behavioral economics
• Background in design research/design ops, design, market research
• Comfort within a fast-paced, collaborative environment with client teams who are often initially uncomfortable with ambiguity
• Comfort learning and working within the current Mach49 Experience Research process.
• Ability to work effectively with All levels of organizations
• Willing to be flexible and work when the work is needed, sometimes at odd hours (there are lots of peaks and valleys during an incubation)
  

Applicants must have the right to work in the UK‍