Company Description
Informa is a leading academic publishing, business intelligence, knowledge, and events business, creating unique content and connectivity for customers all over the world. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a member of the FTSE 100.
Taylor & Francis is one of the world’s largest publishers of high-quality, peer reviewed scholarly journals, books, e-books and reference works. We empower learners, thinkers and doers with trusted knowledge that advances research and enriches lives. We bring together diverse people, ideas and opinions to validate and publish the experts, theories and truths that matter. And we’ve been doing this in an unbroken arc since 1798.
Our purpose is to foster human progress through knowledge. We strongly believe that this requires us to encourage and examine different ideas and voices, so that any work that meets our exacting levels of quality deserves to be included in our publications. This requires open minds, the opportunity for robust debate, and the courage to defend perspectives that stand up to scrutiny, even if they conflict with our personal beliefs or values. Because that’s the only way to find the best obtainable version of the truth and, ultimately, foster human progress. If you agree, then we’d love to hear from you.
Job Description
As Research Lead at T&F, you will own the qualitative understanding of our users. Reporting to the Head of Product Design, you'll uncover our users motivations, mental models, and unmet needs through interviews, usability studies, and diary studies. You are quantitatively literate enough to work alongside Customer Intelligence and Data Science, knowing when a hypothesis needs qual versus quant and how to triangulate between them.
Research Practice Leadership
You own research as a discipline at T&F not just as a set of methods, but as a way of thinking that the product organisation needs to internalise.
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Define and evolve our research practice establishing the standards, methods, and ethical principles that govern how research is conducted across the organisation.
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Build and maintain a research programme that balances reactive support for active product work with proactive, generative research that gets ahead of the roadmap.
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Develop a research repository and knowledge management system that makes accumulated user insight accessible, searchable, and genuinely reusable across teams preventing the same questions from being re-researched from scratch every six months.
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Build research literacy across the product organisation, coaching Product Designers, Product Managers, and Business Analysts to conduct lightweight research confidently and responsibly, without creating dependency on the Research Lead for every study.
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Advocate for research investment at leadership level making the case for why the time and resource spent on user understanding pays back in product quality and reduced rework.
Generative & Discovery Research
The most valuable research at T&F is the research that reveals what the team does not yet know. You will lead the studies that open new problem spaces not just validate solutions already in flight.
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Design and lead generative research studies, in-depth interviews, contextual inquiry, diary studies, and ethnographic observation that build deep understanding of users' goals and outcomes desired.
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Identify the most important unanswered questions about users and build a proactive research agenda to address them rather than waiting for product teams to commission studies.
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Synthesise research findings into sharp, decision-relevant insight producing outcomes that are genuinely actionable rather than descriptive, and that a PM or designer can use to make better decisions the same day they read them.
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Develop and maintain a nuanced understanding of core user segments, their goals, mental models, JTBD, trust triggers, and the moments in the experience that determine whether they stay or leave.
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Explore emerging customer needs and market shifts that the product team has not yet detected bringing the outside view in and expanding the team's sense of what is possible and necessary.
Evaluative & Usability Research
Research is not only about discovery. You will also evaluate ensuring that what is being built will work for the people it is built for, before and after it ships.
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Design and run usability studies, concept tests, and prototype evaluations across product domains generating clear, prioritised findings that design and engineering teams can act on quickly.
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Establish a continuous evaluation rhythm ensuring that live product experiences are regularly tested with real users, not just at launch.
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Work with Product Designers to build research into the design process at the right moments not bolted on at the end but integrated early enough to change the direction of a design before it is committed to build.
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Define the standard for what 'tested with users' means at T&F including minimum sample sizes, participant criteria, and the difference between a quick validation check and a study that warrants significant design change.
Mixed Methods & Data Partnership
The most powerful insights at come from combining the human depth of qualitative research with the scale and precision of quantitative intelligence. You will be the person who bridges these two disciplines.
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Work in close, ongoing partnership with the Customer Intelligence Lead bringing qualitative context to behavioural signals and using quantitative data to prioritise and scope qualitative investigations.
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Identify when a qualitative finding needs quantitative validation at scale, and work with the Data team to design the right measurement approach.
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Interpret quantitative anomalies unexpected drops, surprising patterns, counterintuitive trends through a qualitative lens, designing the research that explains what the data cannot.
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Contribute to the development of survey instruments and quantitative research designs where appropriate bringing the craft of good question design to large-scale customer measurement programmes.
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Work with Data Scientists to understand what behavioural data exists for a given research question and where the gaps are that only qualitative work can fill.
Insight Translation & Organisational Impact
Research that stays in a report is research that was not finished. You will ensure that insight moves from study to decision, from finding to action.
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Develop user personas, journey maps, and experience principles that are genuinely grounded in research and genuinely used by the product team not wall art.
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Present research findings to senior stakeholders, including VP Product and Head of Product Design, in a way that creates conviction and drives investment decisions.
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Create feedback loops between research and product that ensure insights are tracked through to action following up on whether findings were used and understanding why they were not when they were not.
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Champion inclusive research practice ensuring that research participants reflect the full diversity of T&Fs user base, including users with access needs, lower digital literacy, and underserved segments.
Qualifications
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Significant years in user research, with a portfolio that demonstrates both generative and evaluative research across complex, consumer-facing digital products.
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Mastery of qualitative research methods in-depth interviewing, contextual inquiry, usability testing, diary studies and the judgement to know which method fits which question.
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Mixed-methods capability you are quantitatively literate, comfortable interpreting behavioural data, and experienced working alongside data analysts to triangulate qual and quant findings.
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A track record of research that changed something product decisions, design directions, or strategic priorities that shifted meaningfully because of your work.
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Strong synthesis and storytelling skills you can take 20 hours of interview material and distil it into three insights that make a room of PMs and designers lean forward.
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Experience building research as a practice establishing standards, building repositories, developing research literacy in non-researchers, and advocating for investment in user understanding.
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Collaborative by nature you build genuine partnerships with designers, PMs, and data colleagues rather than operating as a separate discipline that delivers findings on request.
Additional Information
At Taylor & Francis we care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. You will be joining a thriving business, working alongside an exceptional group of people. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about.
What we offer in return:
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An excellent work/life balance with a fantastic, flexible working culture
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25 days annual leave per year plus a day off for your birthday
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3 additional discretionary days off during the holiday season at the end of the year
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4 paid volunteering days each year
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Company funded single cover private medical insurance
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Employee assistance programme – offering 24/7 well-being support
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Share Match – Plan that matches every share purchased with two free shares.
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Pension scheme
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Life assurance, plus optical and medical care
What you should know:
This role is based in the UK and you must have the right to work and live in the UK.
We believe that great things happen when people connect face-to-face. That's why we work in-person with each other, or with customers and partners, three days a week or more. When you’re not spending time together in one of our offices or other workplaces – like at conference – you get the flexibility and support to work from home or remotely.
The successful candidate will be able to utilise our balanced working model. We ask that candidates live within a commutable distance to our Milton Park office or London office to ensure that as a balanced worker they can make it to our office location 3 days per week. Please note that our Milton Park office will be relocating to Oxford city centre in late 2027 / early 2028, offering an exciting new workplace in the heart of the city.
Closing Date: Applications will close on the 24th of July 2026
Being Yourself at Taylor & Francis
If you’re excited about working with Taylor & Francis to foster human progress through knowledge, we invite you to apply even if your existing skills and experience don’t fit every item listed above. At Taylor & Francis, we are at our best and most successful when colleagues can be themselves and contribute regardless of their identity or background. As a colleague, you will have the opportunity to further innovate and develop in areas that you are passionate about. Our goal is to empower you with the resources, incentives, and flexibility you need to enjoy success at work and to live a healthy, balanced life.
Taylor & Francis is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe in and value diversity of people and thought, fostering a supportive and inclusive environment where all colleagues can learn and succeed as their true selves. Taylor & Francis recruits, develops, and retains colleagues without regard to any protected personal characteristics or other non-merit-based factor.
If you have a disability, or face another barrier, and would like to request an adjustment to assist your participation in the hiring process and/or in the advertised position, please contact [email protected]. Your request will be reviewed and considered in the strictest confidence.
We genuinely care about our colleagues, promoting work-life balance, wellbeing, and flexible working. We believe that the skills and experience you bring to Taylor & Francis are invaluable. We want you to have the opportunity to develop your abilities, and to innovate and develop in areas which you are passionate about. To find out more about our business and the great career opportunities please go to our Careers Site: http://www.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/careers
Or better yet check out our LinkedIn ‘Life’ Page, highlighting our accomplishments, employees, and company culture. It’s also a good way of meeting our recruitment team, who will be happy to advise you on your journey here at T&F.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/taylor-&-francis-group/life/79e0c27c-afdf-4bbb-84e6-5f8ed5e10bb8/
