Senior User Researcher, US - 6 Month Contract

📍New York | 💰 $140 - 170K (annualised) + Equity | What’s so unique about design and research at Monzo

About us: 

Monzo is a leading financial technology company, with over 8 million customers, committed to providing modern banking solutions . Monzo launched in the US in February 2022 and is one of the top fintechs in Europe. In the last few years, we’ve built a banking app that our customers love – with extremely high daily engagement, an industry leading net promoter score, and award-winning customer support. We’ve raised over $1 billion from YCombinator, Stripe, Coatue, Eric Schmidt, Mike Moritz, and others - most recently at a $4.5 billion valuation. 

We’re just getting started in the US: We’re an agile full stack team operating like an early stage startup but with the financial, operational, and engineering platform muscle of a larger company. We’re focused on building an amazing US product, shipping and iterating quickly, and deepening our product market fit. We’re looking for highly driven, enterprising people to help us achieve our mission to make money work for everyone.

About the US team

We were founded to make money work for everyone! With that in mind, Monzo is investing to accelerate our US expansion! You will help build US-specific products that will shape the future of banking there.

As the first User Researcher in our US Monzo team, you will spearhead our efforts to deeply understand the needs of our customer base, reporting directly to the US CEO. In this pioneering role, you will lead end-to-end research projects working with Design, Data Science, Product Managers, Marketing and Engineering. This role is pivotal in shaping the future direction of Monzo in the US, providing you with the autonomy to make significant contributions that will profoundly affect our customers' lives and the overall success of Monzo.

We're looking for someone that can visit the New York office at least twice per week for this role.

What you’ll be working on:

• Plan and run qualitative studies, including field observations and interviews, diary studies remote and in-person concept testing and usability studies for existing and future products.
• Identify actionable insights through quantitative methods such as large scale surveys, and use basic statistical concepts to ensure findings are robust
• Help build out scalable research processes across various markets.
• Work with other researchers to connect the dots across multiple teams and markets 
• Evaluate and explore information architecture, using tree-tests, card-sorts and whatever other methods are appropriate

Your day-to-day:

• Work within a cross-functional team to develop and deliver a product strategy for the next phase of international expansion, including building a deep understanding of customer needs and market opportunities, and how we’ll differentiate ourselves and grow
• Collaborate with and influence key stakeholders across the organisation, including the wider product teams, company leadership, finance, marketing, compliance, legal, regulatory affairs and more to get alignment and support for the strategy
• Work closely with Product Managers, Product Designers, Engineers and other User Researchers to generate hypotheses and plans for high-impact research that helps us better understand our existing and potential customers and how to create a better product that solves their problems and meets their needs.
• Lead the research for your squads, suggesting the best approach and methods to use so we’re capturing the right insights that help us grow and develop our product in our mission to Make Money Work For Everyone.
• Collaborate closely with our analytics team to make sure our qualitative insights are also enhanced by robust quantitative analysis whenever possible, and run some basic quantitative analysis yourself
• Mentor and train Product Managers and Product Designers to run their own lightweight "disposable" research, freeing you up to do the high-impact work.
• Communicate research findings to inform business decisions through the best possible means ranging from presentations, workshops, reports or whatever mechanism gets the insights into our decision-making.

You should apply if:

• You’ve got lots of hands-on experience with exploratory and evaluative quantitative research methods, appreciating their limitations and when to apply them appropriately.
• You have experience building products for new markets, cultures, and languages.
• You've worked in a multidisciplinary team environment before, where you've led the research and made a demonstrable impact on the direction of the product or service.
• You can run user testing with your eyes closed, regardless of the setting. You should be comfortable in a lab as well as stopping people in the street for quick feedback or setting up remote tests.
• You're happy user testing on mobile. We’re a mobile-only bank, so if you’ve got experience with both iOS and Android we’ll love you even more.
• You appreciate robust research study design, but can also consider practical constraints and business goals – you understand what 'just enough research' means.
• You’re a strong communicator and facilitator. You’re able to tell a story so your audience will want to listen to and zoom into detail when needed to help solutions come to life.
• You value collaboration and are at your best when you’re part of a team.
• You are flexible in your approach and embrace a challenge; you might need to come up with new ways of answering research questions quickly and communicating the results in a memorable, impactful way.
• You’re familiar with quantitative research and understand how user research help shape metrics and drive teams towards success.

The Interview Process:

Our interview process involves 3 main stages: 

• Recruiter call (30 minutes). A video chat with Robert who is part of our hiring team.  This focuses on general suitability and fit for Monzo.
• Research methods (60 minutes). You will be sent a pre-interview task by the hiring team, which you will discuss in the interview, followed by situation questions.
• Final loop (Total 1hr 30-2 hours). Split into 2 interviews - Teamwork & Impact.

Our average process takes around 2-3 weeks but we will always work around your availability. You will have the chance to speak to our recruitment team at various points during your process but if you do have any specific questions ahead of this please contact us on [email protected]

What’s in it for you:

💰$140K to 170K (annualised) ➕ plus stock options ➕ a pretty great benefits package (if we do say so ourselves!)

⏰ We offer flexible working hours and trust you to work enough hours to do your job well, at times that suit you and your team.

📚Learning budget of $1,500 a year for books, training courses and conferences

➕ Diversity and inclusion is a priority for us — if we want to solve problems for people around the world, our team has to represent our customers. So we need to attract the best talent and create an environment that supports and includes them. You can read more about diversity and inclusion on our blog.

Equal Opportunity Statement

We are actively creating an equitable environment for every Monzonaut to thrive.

Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us and we are making sure we have lots of support for all of our people to grow at Monzo. At Monzo, embracing diversity in all of its forms and fostering an inclusive environment for all people to do the best work of their lives with us. This is integral to our mission of making money work for everyone. You can read more in our blog, 2022 Diversity and Inclusion Report and 2023 Gender Pay Gap Report.

We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, or veteran, neurodiversity or disability status.

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