Bark is hiring a

UX Researcher

London

About Bark

Bark is revolutionising the way people find professionals in over 1,000 unique categories. As the UK's largest and fastest-growing services marketplace, we're on a mission to make finding the right professional quick and easy. With a presence in eleven countries and plans for further expansion, joining us at this genuinely exciting time will be a journey like no other.

Our cutting-edge technology ensures that you can always find the best professional for any job. With a talented team of over 220 dedicated individuals, we're committed to providing exceptional service and ensuring that our customers are satisfied every step of the way.

This is an exciting time to join our scaling business, we recently ranked 64th in the Sunday Times 100 fastest growing private tech companies in 2023.

As a profitable scale-up, Bark is in a unique position to offer the best of both worlds; the excitement and agility of a start up combined with the financial security and backing of a renowned private equity firm, EMK Capital. You'll have ownership, agility, responsibility and stimulation without any of the worry.

About the role

Our Product and Design teams are innovating for the global diversity of human needs, requiring us to deeply understand the behaviours of the people behind them. Partnering closely with designers, product managers and various business partners, we perform exploratory, formative, and evaluative research studies that enable teams to make informed and confident decisions.

In this role you’ll be expected to plan, execute and socialise research projects to drive strategy, exploration and understanding. You are self-motivated, detail-oriented, and able to work efficiently and effectively with cross-functional teams. You’ll also work as a collaborator with other researchers, whilst knowing when to optimise for an independent approach. You may also be asked to perform and improvise under tight timelines and changing environments. We are looking for a natural and vocal team player and an advocate for our users. As well as being an excellent communicator, you are excited to work closely with stakeholders, and motivated on influencing the future of Bark - always evangelising a user-centred design process as you do so.

Responsibilities

• Act in an independent contributor role to various levels within the design and product teams to identify research topics and plan studies for both generative and evaluative purposes.
• Plan and lead research projects end-to-end and facilitate the experience for our team.
• Conduct research using a wide range of methods
• Package and deliver insights to a range of stakeholders
• Communicate results and illustrate suggestions in compelling and creative ways, tailoring findings to suit the audience.
• Work closely with Design and Research to peer review and execute research
• Find creative and compelling ways to present and evangelise insights throughout the company.
• Create artefacts, educational tools, experiences and processes that help build and evangelise the UX Research within the larger organisation.
• Create and maintain our research repository, and act as a consultant for user needs, behaviours and segmentation for the Bark team.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of demonstrable end-to-end experience in User Research (or strongly related field), during which time you have shown independently planning, recruiting for, conducting, and synthesising user research sessions and/or service design efforts.
• Familiarity with a wide variety of qualitative research methods such as: concept testing, ethnographic-style fieldwork, group discussions, card sorting, workshops, remote studies, etc.
• Familiarity with inferential statistics and quantitative research methods.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and writing skills.
• A proven track record of successful partnership with product managers, designers, analytics, engineers, and other business partners.
• Demonstrable case studies of existing research work which show end-to-end research which showcase design solutions or strategic user understanding across either/both web and mobile experiences.
• A degree in; Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Sociology, Behavioural Economics, Anthropology, Design or related field.

Even better if…

• A postgraduate degree in; Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Design or related field.
• You have experience working as an in-house UX Researcher for an organisation
• Demonstrable lead voice for user-centred design, evangelising research, as well as persuasive communication, presentation, and writing skills.
• Experience introducing, improving, maintaining or sunsetting research operations processes, such as the introduction of a new tool, appropriate organising and data collection or seamless transitioning between tools.
• You can command a plethora of methods that address discovery, exploration, testing and listening areas of the product life cycle
• You can teach, as well as consult on research methods and data validity
• You have firsthand experience in data-driven decision-making

Who You Are

• We’re looking for someone that enjoys a flexible approach. We like to take a varied style towards our research and we’re always willing to try something new to ensure that we have a well-rounded understanding of what our users need. You’ll thrive at Bark if you are;
• A person that is familiar with agile methodologies
• Comfortable with some degree of context switching and handling multiple projects
• A powerful advocate for the user and ensuring that their voice is consistently brought to the table
• A person that thrives on matching data with behaviour
• A proactive self-developer that keeps up to date with the User Research community, and a spokesperson for representing users of the Bark platform
• A proactive researcher and peer to other researchers with a drive to elevate with excellence

What’s Exciting About This Opportunity

• User experience is a priority and the landscape is wide open in terms of defining the best ways to work and ways to influence product definition and partner outcomes.
• You’ll be joining a growing team of UX Researchers, of which your involvement and vision will shape the vision for UX Research at Bark.
• You'll own research not just for the current vertical’s products that you’re responsible for, but the broader future that these experiences could help people achieve as well.
• You’ll have a variety of exciting missions to be part of and provide thoughtful insights to.
• You'll be maintaining or establishing practices and processes to make this team successful.

Interested? We keep our interview process simple

• You will be reached out by our people team for an initial screening interview.
• If you are selected, you will then take part in a 3-part interview process, where we will get to know a bit more about you, followed by asking you to devise a research plan and hypothetical method of testing that you would deliver to stakeholders, such as UX Research, Design and Product Management
• You will then have a final interview with the hiring team

Perks and Benefits

• Share options in a rapidly growing company whose founders have a proven track record and are Private Equity backed
• Flexible working policy with a central office in London
• Private health insurance run by Aviva including dental cover
• Personal annual L&D Budgets with £1,000 to spend on your development
• Enhanced Gympass membership for all employees with access to mental health courses and fitness classes
• Fully stocked kitchen and weekly team lunches
• Financial advisor
• Cycle to work scheme
• Regular wellness weeks with industry leading talks through to massages in the office
• Being at the forefront of an industry with new and exciting problems to solve