Contract User Researcher / Service Designer

Contract User Researcher / Service Designer

We are recruiting for a User Researcher / Service Designer to join a focused three-person squad alongside a Tech Lead and a Product Analyst, refining, validating, and sizing discovery epics to give executive leadership the confidence to fund and greenlight initiatives into full delivery for one of our clients.

AND Digital is a technology company focused on accelerating digital delivery and dedicated to closing the digital skills gap. Since 2014, we have partnered with organisations to build better digital products and stronger digital teams.

Our client is transitioning to a focused house-of-brands model underpinned by a commitment to deliver a modern luxury experience across all digital and physical touch points. While high-level customer journeys have been established, the underlying operational processes and technical systems required to deliver a frictionless experience remain fragmented. Following an initial hero-journey discovery, this phase focuses on connecting the overarching customer vision to internal enterprise operations, dealership workflows, and architectural enablers, with a dedicated focus on the North American retail network.

Key Responsibilities

• Comprehensive & Observational Research: Drive the completion of a detailed, end-to-end service blueprint. Lead research to capture operational realities, including interviewing retailer network staff and directly observing lead handling across contact centres and sales teams (utilising UK retail sites as an operational proxy for North American counterparts).
• Service Blueprinting & Process Mapping: Deepen existing customer journeys by mapping desired experiences against internal corporate operations, core middleware, and retailer management systems to align interactions between end consumers, central teams, and retail franchise networks.
• Research Synthesis & Change Sizing: Act as a hybrid research and design practitioner. Synthesise qualitative and quantitative findings into actionable operational inputs at a level of granularity that allows technical and commercial teams to accurately scope and estimate the effort required for change.
• Problem Definition & Use Cases: Translate discovery findings into structured use cases and problem statements, tying solved customer and dealer pain points directly to the client's modern luxury design principles.
• Stakeholder Facilitation: Plan and facilitate collaborative workshops with central service design peers, commercial teams, and retail network stakeholders to pressure-test assumptions and validate end-to-end feasibility.
• Discovery-to-Delivery Partnership: Partner daily with the Product Analyst to develop evidence-backed business cases, and collaborate with the Tech Lead to ensure proposed user experiences match technical and integration realities (e.g., Salesforce platforms, core integration middleware, and local dealer CRMs).

Expected Outcomes By the end of this refinement phase, leadership will have a clear, evidence-based view of the customer, operational, and system considerations underpinning each recommended initiative.

Skills & Experience

• Proven track record planning and conducting user research, observational field studies, and qualitative/quantitative insight synthesis.
• Strong background in service design and UX design within complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise ecosystems.
• Experience designing multi-layered services where consumer-facing digital touchpoints intersect with B2B or franchise operations (such as automotive retail, dealership networks, or distributed sales models).
• Proven ability to synthesise complex, ambiguous inputs into clear, scannable service blueprints, user flows, and actionable use cases.
• Confident workshop facilitator skilled at navigating differing viewpoints across central corporate teams, local markets, and technical teams.
• Collaborative mindset with experience working in tight-knit discovery pods alongside product analysts and technical architects.
• Compelling presentation skills, enabling senior enterprise stakeholders to clearly understand trade-offs, visualise opportunities, and make confident delivery decisions.

Equal Opportunities Statement

AND Digital is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applications from all qualified candidates. We actively encourage applications from women, ethnic minorities, and individuals with disabilities. We consider all flexible working arrangements, subject to the requirements of the role. Where reasonable adjustments are needed, we will strive to make changes to accommodate them.

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