Research Manager

Job Description

This is an exciting opportunity to work within the Customer, Brand, and Engagement community. You’ll be responsible for the development, coordination, and execution of research to help inform and shape our customer strategy.

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.

For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, based at either our Northampton, Swindon, London or Bournemouth office. Whilst these locations are where we are primarily looking to fill the role, if you’re an internal applicant based in a different location we would welcome your application and if successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this could work for this specific role. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.

If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can.

What you’ll be doing

• You’ll develop a deep understanding of our audience’s needs, behaviours, motivations, and choices. This understanding will guide and influence decision-making across the business, ensuring the organisation is thinking customer-first.
• You’ll design and lead research projects, managing them from start to finish. This involves selecting the right tools and methodologies, briefing external agencies, and working with stakeholders to ensure that each project meets its objectives.
• You will stay up to date with the latest research techniques and you’ll foster innovation in how we approach research, continuously looking for new tools, methods, and approaches that keep us on the cutting edge. You’ll ensure that the research we conduct remains relevant, impactful, and future-focused.
• Collaboration is key. You’ll work closely with cross-functional teams, fostering alignment across departments and ensuring a shared understanding of the customer. You will bring people on the journey with you, ensuring that research findings are applied meaningfully and aligned with broader business objectives.
• You will manage relationships with external research agencies, ensuring they deliver high-quality, timely findings that align with business needs. You’ll also engage new platforms or partners where necessary to address any gaps in research capability.
• You’ll help build and shape a Centre of Expertise for research, creating scalable frameworks and best practices that can be applied across projects. Your focus will be on developing repeatable processes that ensure timely, valuable findings are delivered to the business, ensuring our customer-first thinking is at the heart of everything we do.

About you

The minimum requirements for this role are:

• Experienced in managing high-impact research projects, with a proven track record of leading and implementing research that delivered measurable outcomes and supported critical understanding and decision making.
• You have hands-on expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. Your deep experience in applying these methodologies allows you to tackle complex business questions and provide the clear evidence needed to inform strategic decisions.
• You excel at distilling research findings and framing them in a way that makes them easy to understand, ensuring they resonate with stakeholders and are easy to action. You are a brilliant communicator, writer, and content creator, with the ability to turn complex research into compelling narratives that inspire action.
• You are highly skilled in relationship management and thrive in collaborative environments. You work seamlessly across teams and functions, ensuring alignment and shared understanding of research findings across the business.
• You are naturally curious and open to learning. You’re always looking for new methods, tools, and ideas to stay ahead in the field and continuously improve how research is conducted and applied.
• You have demonstrated experience ensuring research findings are embedded, actioned, and drive meaningful impact.
• You will hold a degree or have completed an MRS qualification in a relevant research field or human behaviour field such as Psychology, Behavioural Science, Sociology, Anthropology, or quantitative Market Research.

Our Customer First behaviours are all about putting customers and members at the heart of how we work together. You can strengthen your application by showing the behaviours that resonate with you, and how you might have already demonstrated these.

• Say it straight - This is about being honest and direct with good intent and saying what needs to be said in the room. It’s also about being clear, precise, and using language that we and, importantly, our customers and members can understand.
• Push for better - This is about aiming high and constantly looking for better in how we work together and serve our customers and members.
• Get it done - This is about prioritising what will have the greatest impact, being decisive and taking accountability for delivering on the end-to-end outcome.

We know applying for jobs can sometimes feel like you’re sending an application into a black hole. We review each application individually. So, it’s a good idea to call out your most relevant experience on your application to give yourself the best chance.

The extras you’ll get

There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including:

• A personal pension – if you put in 7% of your salary, we’ll top up by a further 16%
• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year
• Life assurance worth 8x your salary
• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Wellhub – Access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness.
• Access to an annual performance related bonus
• Access to training to help you develop and progress your career
• 25 days holiday, pro rata

What makes us different

Nationwide is the world’s largest building society. With over 15 million customers, we have a relationship with almost a quarter of the UK’s population. We’ve got the scale to compete with the big banks, but we’re not a bank.

As a building society, we’re owned by our members – that’s our customers who have their current account, mortgage or savings with us. It means we can do things differently to deliver our Purpose – Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society.

When you work at Nationwide, you can experience that difference for yourself. You’ll be part of a high-performing, purpose-driven organisation that offers rewarding career experiences and a highly competitive range of benefits to match. You’ll also be joining us at an important time as we seek to reach more and more people in the UK. We want everyone in the UK to know that they don’t have to bank with a bank. They can choose a modern mutual instead.