UX Research Manager
Spotlight Sports Group, United Kingdom

Spotlight Sports Group is a sports data and media company which focuses on horse racing, greyhounds, football, other major sports and sports betting. The company runs multiple digital products across our consumer offerings and partnerships within retail and third party sites, as well publishes daily newspapers for direct customers and partnered businesses. Spotlight Sports Group comprises several brands including the Racing Post, Pickswise, My Racing and ICS-digital - all working towards creating the most comprehensive and relevant sports data solutions in the UK and beyond.

The Product Design and User Research team is a key part of our businesses’ transition to a more digitally focused approach.

We’re focused on really understanding our customers, helping to shift the company to become more user-centred in their approach to meeting business goals. We’re looking to build a team that is interested in the people behind our data points and helping to communicate the benefits of this level of insight to the company.

Currently, the PDamp;R team’s remit has greatly expanded in the last year - working on racing and other sports products for the UK, Europe and now expanding into the US and other markets.

We are looking for a UX Research Manager to help formulate and inform our qualitative research strategy across users and markets as well as getting their hands dirty with specific research projects to help inform product design direction. There is a huge opportunity to gain insights on users in our growth markets to help us as a company get a jump on our competitors in these emerging markets.

This role will start off being a mixture of both longer term strategic insights work as well as delivery focused tactical work (e.g. design validation and usability feedback by setting up user testing, sending out surveys, etc.) with the longer term goal of it leaning more on the strategy end once larger business and research directions have been mapped out. To start, the role will definitely be a mix of Research (with a capital R) and research (more day to day).

Outside of working with the Director of PDamp;R and stakeholders on longer term strategy, this role would also involve managing and overseeing at least two other researchers - helping them deliver valuable insight to the rest of the company. We want someone who has a proven track record in qualitative methodologies and is exceptional at presenting compelling findings to stakeholders in an easy to digest manner. We also want someone who can guide stakeholders both familiar and unfamiliar with the discipline of User Research through the process and promote a genuinely user-centred approach.

This will involve:

• Working with our B2C, B2B and Affiliates sides of the business on research approaches and insights needed to help create products that focus on providing sports data to both sports enthusiasts and bookmakers for multiple audiences
• Consulting with the Director of PDamp;R, senior product leadership and other senior stakeholders on insights and research needs across the company to help inform a larger strategy and approach
• Managing and mentoring other UX researchers on the team - lending support and direction for their work
• Reviewing and refining our user design personas across product lines - working with the design teams and researchers to identify key insights to gain or update
• Working on multiple UX Research projects from usability testing new features and customer journeys, to analysing the ease of use of our current products to working with other departments or third party research partners on relevant data and research findings

Requirements

• Experience in a wide variety of UX Research methodologies and practices including:
  • Usability/Ease of use studies for existing products and benchmarking.
  • Remote unmoderated research
  • Moderating remote and face to face research
  • Diary studies
  • Surveys
  • Experience of conducting end to end studies, from recruitment amp; screening, study design amp; script writing, organising venues and/or coordinating with research partners, facilitating, documenting results, analysing findings
  • Experience of working with Product Designers to generate personas, user journeys/experience maps, user needs
  • Experience working with a global customer panel

• Ideal candidate has experience conducting intercepts and on-site observation
• Experience managing and mentoring other researchers
• Experience working on larger research strategies that focus on 1-2 year goals alongside the day to day tactical work needed for product delivery
• Managing stakeholder across numerous departments and working collaboratively with other disciplines.
• Evangelising the benefit of user based research for product design and development, a

Job Rewards and Benefits