Senior Research Manager

Closing date for applications: 02/08/2026

Location London, United Kingdom

Salary £80,600 – £120,900

Job typePermanent | Contract typeFull Time

Mostly Remote

You’ll spend most of your time at home, working with your team digitally. You’ll come into an office or hub at least twice a month to collaborate with your colleagues.

Managerial / Technical Lead

This is a general indication and doesn’t always reflect day-to-day responsibilities. Check the job description for full details.

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We’re building something better

This role is in NatWest Boxed

At NatWest Boxed, we’re a high performing team that’s always on the lookout for exceptional people. We encourage an inclusive and diverse working environment, where teamwork, input and collaboration is valued no matter your level.

Job description

This role is based in the United Kingdom and as such all normal working days must be carried out in the United Kingdom.

Join us as Senior Research Manager

We're searching for a Senior Research Manager to head up our research function at NatWest Boxed. You’ll work under one of our Product Directors, enjoying a high degree of trust and empowerment to set the direction of the research function. Your team will lead research across NatWest Boxed (our B2B2C Embedded Finance Business) and Mettle (our award-winning neobank for small businesses).

You’ll be running a small team of sharp, accomplished User Researchers, shaping the priorities, ways of working, and direction of the function.

You’ll draw on your experiences to inspire the team and the business to achieve first-class results, ensuring an exceptionally high-quality bar and maintaining a competitive edge in the market.

You’ll be the company-wide ambassador for customer-centricity, establishing frameworks that couple research strategy that tightly to business goals, while educating and supporting the wider organization.

You’ll work closely with customer facing (ops, sales) and customer focussed (product, design) functions to understand our customers. Helping leadership have a cohesive understanding, to ensure they are making the right strategic bets.

What you'll do

Your core day-to-day activities will involve:

Overseeing the holistic research roadmap and managing associated budgets, balancing future-looking discovery work with evaluative experiments that optimize live products.

Steer research across two distinct business lines, seamlessly guiding your team to understand enterprise partners and their customers, to empathizing with the daily realities of sole traders.

You’ll be the coach and quality gate for your team, helping researchers hone their craft across complex generative discovery and rigorous evaluative methods.

Advocating for the irreplaceable value of deep human insight, pushing the business to understand underlying customer emotions and tying them back to product design and commercial opportunity.

Set your team up for success to navigate a growing organisation, shaping the tools and process (ResearchOps) to make research effective and scalable.

Additionally you'll be

Establishing robust frameworks, setting the gold standard for independent research, and fostering a culture of experimentation across all product and design squads.

Influencing and guiding executive-level stakeholders through articulating the business implications of your research and communicating the strategic direction of the function

Acting as the heartbeat of the customer for the business, encouraging teams to start with customers in everything they do, and delivering improvements in independent research methodologies..

Evolving the research function, staying at the cutting edge of emerging trends, and building scalable ResearchOps tools.

Opinionated about what ‘good’ research looks like, and where the craft is heading. Eager to try new practises whilst maintaining research rigour.

The skills you'll need

Deeply versed across research frameworks (including Jobs to Be Done), with the judgment to empower the team to select the right approach for each problem.

Deep experience with mixed-methods research, encompassing complex qualitative and quantitative analysis, and the ability to coach teams to bring different data streams together into a cohesive story.

A proven track record of driving business results, demonstrating how your team's research has led to tangible, positive outcomes and improved product performance as well as business outcomes/ metrics.

Experience leading dynamic research teams as a natural coach, ensuring team members constantly hone their craft and synthesize data into compelling business narratives. You’ll be able to demonstrate that you’ve previously set up and matured a great research function at a scaling organisation.

Ability to take action, and ownership of ambiguous topics. Bringing teams together, creating alignment and driving change.

Understanding of the unique challenges B2B research brings, and the impact research has had within SaaS.

We'll also be looking for

Practical experience integrating emerging AI tools and modern workflows into a research practice to drive team efficiency and enable research beyond the team.

The ability to thrive with high autonomy, shaping the future of a research function integral to two rapidly changing businesses.

Your benefits breakdown

Here’s a quick look at what your pay package and annual leave could look like if you get accepted for the role. We have a wide range of benefits to support you in your working life and beyond.

Please note, the presented benefits packages are based on the minimum base salary.

Tap each segment for details.

Your pay package

£

Your leave allowance

30 days Annual leave You’ll also have the opportunity to purchase up to 5 additional days off.

3 days Volunteering Take time off to support the causes you’re passionate about.

3 days Training Take time to build the skills you need to grow your career.

Total rewards package

Welcome to our Bishopsgate hub

Based only a few minutes’ walk from Liverpool Street Station, the central location of this office makes working there incredibly convenient. Everything you need is close by, so you can run errands, go to the gym, and socialise with friends and colleagues before and after work.

Bishopsgate recently underwent a multi-year refurbishment programme to improve spaces and facilities as well as become more sustainable.