UX Research Manager

Depop is the community-powered fashion marketplace to buy and sell unique fashion, with over 30 million registered users in more than 150 countries. Depop is a place for anyone to discover and celebrate their style on their own terms, and to feel good about their fashion choices by extending the lives of millions of garments.

The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in London with offices in Manchester and New York. Depop has approximately 400 employees dedicated to its mission of building the world’s most diverse progressive home of fashion, that’s kinder on the planet and kinder to people. In 2021, Depop became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Etsy - the global marketplace for unique and creative goods - and continues to operate as a standalone company.

Depop is an equal opportunity employer. Our mission is to build the world’s most diverse progressive home of fashion. To do this, we encourage people from underrepresented communities to apply. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We’re continuing to build recruitment processes that are fair and welcome requests for reasonable adjustments required throughout your interview experience with us. Depop supports visa sponsorship, sponsorship opportunities may be limited to certain roles and skillsets.

We are looking for a UX Research Manager to lead and manage our research function at Depop, establish a clear voice of the customer, and build a centre of excellence for the research practice. 

You’ll be leading the research function at Depop in growth and excellence, creating a high-performing team. You will develop a clearly defined research roadmap, which is balanced across different portfolios. 

You will be the evangelist for our end users - helping everyone to understand what is important and build empathy across the organisation. You’ll help to build an environment where everyone at Depop values discovery and is user-focusedRole Responsibilities:

• Lead a team of UX Researchers and be the voice of your end-user within Depop
  • Understand what our end users really experience with Depop-
  • Develop frameworks that continuously gather and validate this understanding 
  • Create artefacts and tools to help others understand your end-users
  • Communicate this understanding passionately both to the teams you work with and out to the wider business 
• Develop a strong team - with the right mix of skills and with a strong pipeline aimed at creating a great team in the future 
• Create a centre of excellence for research and discovery that looks at our current needs and supports the future product roadmap
• Work with the Director of Design & research  to ensure there is a robust discovery framework and roadmap - that can scale up or down depending on the need
• Create tools and processes to simplify our ways of working and increase the effectiveness of all teams 
• Set standards and practices for your teams
• Work closely with Design, Product, Engineering, Marketing as well as our product line teams to ensure that Research is tailored to our strategy and achieved at a pace that matches the momentum needed. You will also work with these stakeholders to foster a discovery-led culture.
• Ensure that Design and Research takes a strong leadership position with product & tech and the wider business - be an evangelist for Research excellence 
• Transform strategy into meaningful positive change for our end users 
• Lead development of UX assets and deliverables 
• Lead and establish best practices to drive the best digital experience
• Ensure adherence to design and research best practices, standards and consistency
• Ensure we have adequate software / 3rd party support where needed

Experience:

• An experienced research leader, with experience managing teams of 3+ people
• An exceptional understanding of varied UX research methodologies to deliver high-quality and high-profile research which has actionable results.
• Experienced at evangelising and explaining to others in the organisation about UXR processes, benefits of UXR, UXR methods, employment of UXR and UXR integration. 
• Good business acumen and ability to create and oversee research strategies as an expert in their discipline. 
• A superb understanding of web and app development and the role of UX Research at different stages of product development. 
• The ability to deal with complex research questions and apply the correct methodology(ies) to large scale research questions often with a global reach.
• Exceptional organisation skills.  Can coordinate the research team across the different domains and can ensure we are aligned across the strategic bets

Additional Information

UK Benefits
Health + Mental Wellbeing

• Cash-plan or PMI - you have the choice of a healthcare plan that best suits you
• Subsidised counselling and coaching - we partner with Selfspace to provide you with the opportunity for a good conversation with a qualified person
• Cycle to Work scheme - choose between Evans or the Green Commute Initiative to help access a bike for your commute
• Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) - have access to a confidential support network of expert advice 24/7
• Mental Health First Aiders - we have trained individuals across the business to offer support and signposting

Work/Life Balance

• 25 days annual leave with the option to carry over up to 5 days
• 1 company-wide day off per quarter, for you to take some time for yourself and decompress
• 2 activism days per year for you to use for volunteering, demonstrations or internal initiatives
• We offer sabbaticals for our long-serving employees.

Flexible Working

We’re Flexa® accredited, meaning we offer genuinely flexible working.
MyMode is our hybrid-working model, designed to empower our employees to choose a working mode that works for them. MyMode is composed of 3 working modes: Flex, Office Based and Remote.

• Flex: we'd love you to head to your nearest Depop office once a week, but feel free to work from home the rest of the week.
• Office: Want to head into the office more? No problem, you can opt to be "Office-Based", with your very own desk.
• Remote: depending on your role you can request to be a remote worker, and only head into the office 4 times per year.

All of our offices are also dog-friendly! Do your best work with your best friend.
You can also apply to work abroad for 4 weeks of the year (in UK tax treaty countries).

Family Life

Our parental leave policies aim to support and enable parents to play equal roles in nurturing their families, in a way that is flexible and truly gender-neutral. Our full-time regular employees are eligible for 18 weeks of paid parental leave for the birth or adoption of their child. We also offer IVF leave, shared parental leave and paid emergency parent/carer leave.

Learn and Grow

• We offer budgets for conferences, learning subscriptions and more. We also sponsor and run a myriad of programmes, conferences and meet-ups to upskill our employees and enhance their journey with us.

Your Future

• Life Insurance (financial compensation of 3x your salary)
• Pension (Depop will match your contribution up to 6% of your qualifying earnings)

And finally, as a valued Depop employee we waive all of our employees’ fees when they sell on Depop so you can ship your sold items anywhere in the UK for free.