Senior Design Researcher

Salary: £49,930-£57,543 (depending on skills and experience)

Contract Type: Permanent

Apply by: 10:00am on Monday 25th September

Interviews to be held: Likely mid-October and early November

Alternative flexible working options available and open to discussion

To view the full role profile, click here.

A note about the recruitment process:

At Camden, we value and celebrate difference and encourage diversity in all respects. Our diverse workforce ensures we represent our communities to the best of our ability and enables us to make better decisions. Because of this, we want our recruitment process to be as inclusive and as accessible as possible and we recognise that requires us to be as flexible as we can whilst also preserving the integrity of a fair and transparent process.

Similarly, we appreciate that people’s individual skills and experience may not neatly map to a particular role profile and encourage applications from other professions.

So if you have questions about the role, Camden as a whole, or would like to discuss alternative ways to showcase your interest and expertise, then please attend one of our open events or get in touch with Tom Wastling at tom.wastling@camden.gov.uk 

About Camden:

Camden is building somewhere everyone can thrive by making our borough the best place to live, work, study, and visit. We’re not just home to the UK's fastest-growing economy - we’re focused on creating a borough in which everyone can live a good life and nobody gets left behind.

We have a clear vision - to organise the right people and skills around challenges (like our missions) to deliver the best outcomes for Camden residents and renewal after the pandemic. 

Camden has a proud, rebellious spirit that throughout its history has seen communities come together to tackle problems and bring about real social change. We’re willing to be bold and try new things in the process.

But don’t just take our word for it - you can read about some of the different people working in the Council.  

About the Senior Design Researcher role:

We’re looking for experienced, empathetic, and passionate Senior Design Researchers to work with multidisciplinary teams across policy, design, service expertise, data and research to help scope, plan, and deliver great work that the organisation can be proud of.

As a Senior Design Researcher at Camden, you’ll play a leading role in how we explore and gain a deep understanding of the behaviours and needs of our residents, communities and organisation. Working on key projects such as debt and household financial resilience, designing services that support vulnerable adults, and how we ensure our tenants thrive in safe homes. You’ll work in multidisciplinary teams to make research actionable, in order to inform policy and the design of our services so that they work well for people and achieve policy outcomes.

You will work in the Strategy & Design team. Collectively with service areas, the work of the team spans the whole breadth of Council’s remit with a current focus on preventative health and social care, creating thriving communities for our social housing tenants, and proactively supporting those experiencing financial hardship.

We champion new and different ways of solving problems, promote inclusive and equitable approaches within delivery, and create a culture of continuous improvement to ensure that we achieve the outcomes that meet the needs and expectations of both our residents and staff in a sustainable way.

To view the full role profile, click here.

The application process:

1. Optional: Book a chat and/or attend our open house event - to get a better sense of whether this role would be right for you, and to find out more about the work we do, we hope you’ll take us up on the offer to book a place on one of our virtual open house events, get in touch with our Lead Designer Tom.wastling@camden.gov.uk.
2. Complete a short application via the “Apply” link at the bottom of this page - we anonymise all applications to reduce bias in the hiring process by placing greater emphasis on candidates’ relevant skills and experience.

We want to give everyone the same chance to showcase their relevant skills and experience so we ask you to follow a set formula and answer in the section ‘ application questions’. It should clearly answer these four prompts, in order:

• Tell us about a time where you have led work (or part of a process) that have used evidence and insight in research practice to inform policy and the design of inclusive services which work well for people and achieve outcomes.
• Tell us about a time when you’ve used the insights from research to respond to a complex problem where there wasn’t an easy or obvious answer. What was your approach and how did you engage others?
• What does inclusive research mean to you? Please share an example of how you’ve done it or how you’ve seen it done well.
• Considering the job description and the available information, what approach would you take to setting, and then achieving, personal development goals within this role? 

Please ignore the ‘why me’ statement field. 

1. 1-hour interview with 3 Camden staff - we’ll send you the 4-5 questions and short presentation task in advance, and ensure that there’s plenty of  time at the interview for you to ask any questions you have at this stage in the process.
2. Offer and feedback - if you’re successful at the interview stage, we’ll contact you with the details of your job offer, along with some feedback on your performance throughout the process.
3. Onboarding - once your offer is accepted and the start date agreed, we’ll make sure there’s a plan in place for your first few weeks to make sure you have the information and support needed to ease into your career at Camden.

We know that applying for roles is a time-consuming process and we want to make sure that we respect and appreciate the time and energy you put into applying for this role at the Council. Therefore, no matter what stage of the process you get to and no matter whether your application is successful or not, we will always take the time to provide you with specific, personal feedback on your performance in the application process.