Lead User Researcher

About Monzo

Monzo’s goal is to make money easier and more useful for everyone. The company has moved well beyond its early prepaid card roots and now offers a broad range of banking products in the UK, including personal and business current accounts, joint accounts, accounts for 16–17 year olds, a free children’s account, and credit cards. Customers can also save, invest, and bring their pensions together in one place. The team is known for features like hot coral cards, getting paid early, financial education content on social media, and customer service that has won awards.

Rather than focusing on selling products, Monzo aims to solve real problems and improve people’s lives.

The team

You would join a user research team of 21 researchers who are embedded within collectives such as Core Banking and Business Banking. The team works closely with Product Design, Product Management, and Engineering, and is led by Katherine Vaughan, Monzo’s Director of Research. Research is part of the Design organisation, and the team continues to grow as the business expands.

Role overview

This is a high-impact Lead User Researcher position based in Dublin. The role sits within a hybrid working model and is focused on helping shape product direction through strong research leadership, customer insight, and collaboration across global teams.

What you will do

• Help build a culture that stays deeply customer-focused and enables the whole team to understand user needs clearly.
• Contribute to hiring strong researchers and potentially support hiring across design and related disciplines.
• Partner with researchers in other regions to identify and deliver the most important research priorities.
• Work with international colleagues to manage a pipeline of global opportunities.
• Set priorities carefully and focus effort on the highest-value user problems and opportunities.

What Monzo is looking for

• Experience creating research processes from scratch and adapting them as the business evolves.
• Exposure to global products and enthusiasm for building with a world-class international team.
• Strong hands-on experience with exploratory and evaluative qualitative research, including knowing when each method is appropriate and where its limits are.
• Background working in multidisciplinary teams, leading research work that clearly influenced product or service direction.
• Confidence in user testing across different environments, including lab settings and quick intercept-style feedback in public places.
• Comfort testing mobile experiences, as the business operates as a mobile-only bank.
• Ability to balance rigorous study design with practical constraints and commercial goals, while understanding when a lighter-touch approach is enough.
• Strong communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to present insights as a compelling story and dive into detail when needed.
• A collaborative mindset and preference for working closely within a team.
• Familiarity with quantitative research and an understanding of how user research can influence metrics and support team performance.

Compensation and benefits

The salary for this role is €86,700 to €105,570, plus incentive awards linked to performance and additional benefits.

Benefits include flexible working hours, 34 days of annual leave including public holidays, a €1,200 annual learning budget for books, training and conferences, private healthcare, pension contributions with Monzo matching additional employee contributions up to 6%, and wellbeing support covering financial education, women’s and men’s health, mental health coaching, and counselling.

Application process

• Recruiter call: a 30-minute video conversation with a recruiter covering general fit and suitability.
• Research methods interview: a 60-minute discussion based on a pre-interview task, followed by scenario-based questions.
• Final loop: two interviews totalling 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours, covering Teamwork & Impact as well as Leadership and Values.

Equal opportunity statement

Monzo is committed to diversity and inclusion and wants all employees to be able to do their best work in an inclusive environment. Applications are welcomed without regard to age, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family or parental status, national origin, veteran status, neurodiversity, or disability status.

If you use a preferred name, you may apply with that name; a full or birth name is not required at application stage.