Design UX Researcher

Job description

We're hiring our first UX Researcher to build the evidence behind Descrial's product and design decisions. Our users are investment analysts, associates and partners. They're short on time, deep in expertise and working with confidential data, so getting useful access to them is part of the job.

You'll set up and run Descrial's research practice. It needs to keep pace with weekly releases and turn findings into decisions the team can act on.

About Descrial

Descrial is a startup inside a twenty-year-old company

TresVista has run the analytical work behind private capital since 2006. 2,000 people, 400+ clients including some of the biggest names in the industry, no outside capital and no outside board. That was the first chapter. And we enjoyed getting here!

The next chapter is harder and more interesting

We are moving from services to software, from one firm's workflows to an industry's, and from executing investment decisions to shaping how they get made. Thirty of us in King's Cross, small and senior, with day one founder intensity.

At its fullest expression, Descrial changes how every serious investment firm decides.

The role

You report to Daniel Parkes, Head of Product Design, and work with Product and Engineering. You build participant access through client relationships and study both the workflows professionals follow and how they judge AI-assisted work.

Your remit

The research practice

You design qualitative and quantitative studies, from discovery interviews and contextual inquiry to usability testing and instrumented behavioural analysis. You build participant access, consent and data handling suited to confidential financial contexts, and maintain a searchable insight repository. Your methods need to produce usable evidence in days and fit the release rhythm.

The decisions

You turn findings into prioritised design and roadmap choices, keeping the evidence traceable and arguing the trade-offs where decisions are made. Good synthesis gives the team a clear reason to change direction or stay with a choice.

The user's quality bar

You study trust, verification behaviour and tolerance of failure in LLM-powered features. With Product and Engineering, you define what good output looks like and contribute user-grounded golden examples and failure taxonomies to the evaluation sets that gate AI releases.

Your experience

• You have 5+ years in design or user research for software products, with studies that changed real decisions.
• You have strong qualitative methods and a working command of quantitative analysis, including surveys, funnels and instrumented behaviour.
• You have researched expert or professional users in finance, legal, medical or comparable domains.
• You can synthesise and communicate findings so teams read them, believe them and act on them.
• You have a degree in design, human-computer interaction, psychology or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Useful to have, none required

• Financial services or investment workflows
• Research on AI-assisted or automation products, including trust and verification
• Contributing user evidence to AI evaluation sets or model-quality reviews
• Research operations in confidential or regulated data environments

The reality

This will be difficult.

It demands pace and accuracy. We are building autonomous systems inside high-stakes live businesses, where decisions carry real consequences and impact and waiting for everyone to agree is not always an option. The systems will sometimes get things wrong. In this phase the London team needs to create the evaluations, visibilities and safeguards that catch mistakes early, reducing them over time and stopping the same failures happening again.

If you want to build the foundations of an enterprise grade technology platform to service a multi-billion $ serviceable market opportunity, and share in that growth, this is your chance to join us.

In our conversations

Come ready to discuss three pieces of work:

• A study that changed a product decision: the evidence, your recommendation and what happened.
• Research with hard-to-reach expert users: how you gained access and handled sensitive information.
• A finding about trust or failure that changed how a team designed an experience.

Compensation

• The all-inclusive package is typically £55,000–£70,000 a year, depending on experience.

Practical details

• King's Cross, London. In office (3 to 5 days a week), with colleagues in London and Bengaluru.
• Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
• We aim to finish the process within three weeks. Tell us if you need an adjustment to the interviews.
• Descrial is an equal opportunity employer.

*Your application will be passed to our screening partner Chooseto.AI

Reference 225692673