UX Research Manager

Job Title: UX Research Manager

Location: London – Hybrid

Rate: Competitive

Duration: Contract

About the Role

HSBC UK is building a next-generation banking experience — and we’re looking for a UX Research Manager to join our newly formed Experience Design Team (EXD). This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of digital banking and deliver better outcomes for millions of customers across retail banking, savings, wealth, and insurance.

As a key member of our integrated strategic design capability, you’ll collaborate across business, product, and engineering teams to elevate our design vision and embed a culture of creativity, quality, and innovation.

Key Responsibilities

• Understand project and product-specific goals and objectives, in the context of driving business value and meeting customer needs head on.
• Plan, guide and deliver research across all product phases, as required —from early pre-discovery (customer, tech, and market research) through to iterative validation of concepts, features, and usability testing.
• Identify, organise, recruit and conduct customer interviews and expert/stakeholder interviews. Create discussion guides, participant screeners, and other research artifacts.
• Implement rapid experimentation techniques (e.g., “smoke tests,” agile prototyping, A/B testing) to speed up innovation and learn from real customer feedback.
• Design and run behaviourally informed experiments to validate interventions – whether through A/B testing, habit-forming prompts, or goal setting – ensuring that concepts drive behaviour change.
• Synthesise qualitative and quantitative findings into clear, actionable recommendations that inspire design innovation.
• Proactively identify and mitigate bias risks in research and interpretation, maintaining high standards of data integrity.
• Utilise behavioural science concepts to interpret user data, highlighting opportunities to influence and enhance user engagement.
• Actively participate in and contribute to design reviews, project rituals and collaboration, team playbacks and continuous improvement within the team.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate and refine research findings into actionable outcomes and help prioritise future delivery and investment

Tool & Process

• Identify emerging research methods and experimentation techniques to pioneer new ways of testing and refining concepts at HSBC. Introduce tools, frameworks and processes to streamline studies and reduce turnaround times.
• Collaborate with internal teams (e.g. HSBC UK Customer Team) to adopt modern research methods that enhance the speed and the quality of data collection and analysis.
• Lead and mentor other researchers as we grow (and/or work with external research teams). Help foster a creative, user-centred culture across the organisation.
• Develop and champion a holistic UX research strategy that integrates behavioural design principles, working closely with product, design, and engineering teams.
• Conduct in-depth studies, in collaboration with Behavioural Lead, to understand customer behaviours and uncover motivations, barriers, and triggers for change.
• Present research plans, results, and recommendations to senior leadership. Advocate for customer empathy and an evidence-led perspective in strategic and product decisions.

Knowledge & Experience or Experience

• 4+ years of hands-on user research experience, ideally in a large organisation or consultancy environment.
• Proven track record of leading complex research projects, from initial scoping to final recommendations.
• A creative mindset that thrives on experimenting and pushing boundaries, with a deep understanding of design thinking, agile methodologies, and rapid prototyping.
• Strong proficiency in qualitative and quantitative research methods (e.g. User interviews, A/B tests, usability studies, ethnography, surveys).
• Proficiency in modern research tools (e.g., UserTesting, Optimal Workshop, Dscout, or similar).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, able to translate complex findings into clear, impactful insights with the ability to present ideas clearly and persuasively to team members and stakeholders alike.
• Strong ability to lead and deliver user research and testing, project management, and collaboration.
• Ability to influence stakeholders and integrate a user-behaviour and evidence-based perspective at all levels of the organisation.
• Desirable: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Behavioural Science, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Design, or a related field (or equivalent experience).

If you’re looking for a career that will help you stand out, join HSBC, and fulfil your potential. Whether you want a career that could take you to the top, or simply take you in an exciting new direction, HSBC offers opportunities, support and rewards that will take you further.

Either apply direct! Or please contact me on [email protected]

Please note, in the event of a high volume of applications for this role, we will not be able to respond to each individual applicant. Unfortunately, if you have not been contacted within 7 days we will not be progressing with your application. Thank you for your understanding.