About the Role

The Staff Qualitative Researcher is Superbet's most senior practitioner of human-centred inquiry. This is a hands-on, high-output IC role. You are the person who knows how to get to the truth of a user's experience: their mental models, their anxieties, their unspoken expectations, their moments of delight and frustration.

You will lead qualitative research across the most strategically important and ambiguous product questions Superbet faces - from understanding how new markets experience sports for the first time, to uncovering the emotional dynamics of live in-play gambling, to defining what responsible gaming actually feels like from a user's perspective. You will work closely with the Principal Quant Researcher and the Research Manager to ensure qualitative and quantitative evidence are always richer together than apart.

You bring methodological mastery, creative curiosity, and the kind of presence that makes participants forget they're being observed and leaders believe you shape company wide narratives. You also bring a future positive mindset: you are actively integrating AI tools into your workflow to do more, faster, without sacrificing the depth that makes qual irreplaceable. You know when AI is helpful and when it is not and can help junior researchers make decisions around when to use them. 

What You Will Own

Deep Qualitative Research Execution

• Design and independently execute complex, multi-method qualitative research programmes spanning generative discovery, concept exploration, and evaluative depth - not just individual studies but longitudinal programmes of inquiry.
• Lead the most high-stakes and ambiguous research briefs: new market entry, new product category launches, trust and safety research, responsible gambling insights, and strategic bets where the organisation has the least existing evidence.
• Operate the full qualitative toolkit with mastery: semi-structured and unstructured in-depth interviews, contextual inquiry and ethnographic observation, diary studies and longitudinal panels, participatory design workshops, focus groups, co-creation sessions, and remote moderated/unmoderated studies.
• You have deep expertise in mental models, perception, jobs to be done and combining them to paint a rich psychological and workflow design. 
• Own recruitment strategy end-to-end: define screeners, work with research ops and vendors, build proprietary panels where needed, and ensure participant samples are representative of the diversity of Superbet's user base across markets.
• Produce analysis that goes beyond surface themes: you apply systematic coding, grounded theory approaches, interpretive phenomenological analysis, or jobs-to-be-done frameworks -  selecting the analytical lens that fits the question, not the one that's familiar.
• You inspire product teams to take action and drive progress. You can handle different levels of exposure to research within the company and convert colleagues to champions. 

AI-Enhanced Qualitative Workflows

• Lead the integration of AI tooling into Superbet's qualitative research practice - not as a replacement for human interpretation but as a force multiplier that increases throughput and analytical depth.
• Deploy LLM-assisted transcript analysis pipelines that handle first-pass thematic coding, anomaly flagging, and cross-participant pattern detection - freeing analyst time for higher-order interpretation.
• Use AI tools for rapid synthesis across large corpora of qual data: customer feedback, support tickets, app reviews, social listening, and interview transcripts - triangulating signals that would otherwise require weeks of manual work.
• Critically evaluate the output of AI-assisted analysis for bias, hallucination, and over-compression - maintaining methodological integrity while embracing efficiency.
• Build workflows and documentation that allow the broader team to use AI-assisted qual tools responsibly, and run training sessions that upskill colleagues on both the power and the limits of these tools.

Strategic Insight Generation & Storytelling

• Translate raw qualitative data into insight frameworks that have a life beyond the single study: mental model maps, user need taxonomies, experience principles, and behavioural archetypes that inform multiple product teams over multiple quarters.
• Craft research deliverables that move people — not slide decks of quotes, but evidence-driven narratives that make stakeholders genuinely see the world through the user's eyes.
• Partner with the Principal Quant Researcher to design mixed-methods programmes where qual findings generate hypotheses that quant can test at scale, and where quant anomalies trigger qual investigation.
• Present research to senior and executive stakeholders with confidence and authority — you know how to hold the room, handle pushback on findings, and advocate for the user even when their experience is inconvenient for the business.
• Maintain a living qualitative insights repository: tag and cross-reference findings so that past research informs present decisions and the organisation's qualitative knowledge compounds over time.

Research Quality, Standards & Community

• Set the qualitative methodological bar for the research team: review study designs, discussion guides, and analysis from junior and mid-level researchers - providing specific, developmental feedback that elevates their craft.
• Develop and maintain qualitative research standards documentation: best practices for moderation, coding, synthesis, and reporting that are practical, not theoretical.
• Act as a qualitative research community builder within Superbet: run internal workshops, share cutting-edge methods from the field, and make qualitative research legible and valued by non-research partners.
• Identify opportunities to democratise qualitative methods across Product and Design teams, building guardrails and templates that enable safe self-serve research without compromising rigour.

What We Are Looking For

Essential Experience

• 8+ years of UX research experience with a clear depth specialisation in qualitative methods -  ideally with experience in both generative and evaluative contexts across the full product development lifecycle.
• Mastery of qualitative data collection: exceptional moderation skills across IDIs, focus groups, diary studies, ethnographic observation, and co-design facilitation. You are comfortable in the field, in a lab, and on a video call.
• Deep qualitative analysis expertise: systematic thematic analysis, grounded theory, affinity diagramming at scale, IPA, and the judgment to know when interpretive depth is needed versus surface-level synthesis.
• Strong mixed-methods fluency: experience designing studies that integrate qual and quant, and the ability to have a credible technical conversation with quantitative researchers about their methodology.
• Demonstrated experience using AI tools in qualitative workflows - not just awareness, but real implementation with critical assessment of quality and validity.
• A track record of qualitative research that influenced major product or strategy decisions, with specific examples you can speak to in depth.
• Experience working across multiple markets or cultural contexts - essential given Superbet's multi-country footprint.

Skills & Mindset

• World-class moderator: You have a gift for putting participants at ease and creating the conditions where genuine, unguarded truth emerges. You know when to probe, when to wait, and when to redirect.
• Interpretive depth: You go beyond what users say to understand what they mean — and you can defend your interpretations with analytical rigour, not just instinct.
• AI-enhanced, not AI-dependent: You use AI to go faster and deeper, but your analytical judgement is irreplaceable and you know it. You apply AI tools critically, not uncritically.
• Generative thinker: You don't just answer the research question - you reframe it when necessary, spot adjacent insights the brief didn't ask for, and bring back richer evidence than expected.
• Empathy with edge: You care deeply about users and can advocate for them powerfully - but you're not naive. You understand the commercial context and know how to make the business case for user-centred decisions.
• Cultural intelligence: You are sensitive to the ways that culture shapes how people talk about their experiences, and you adjust your research approach accordingly.
• Org Mover - Your research is not theory alone, you know how to make things tangible, bite sized and move people and work forward. 
• Embrace difficult conversations - Driving research impact is as much about doing good research as it is about convincing people to see things your way. You work with people both easy and difficult to collaborate with to make great experiences come alive. 

Nice to Have

• MSc or PhD in Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, HCI, Cultural Studies, or a related human behaviour field.
• Experience in high intensity consumer products, marketplaces, gaming, financial services, with some degree of experience in trust and safety is useful. 
• Experience with specialist qualitative methods: semiotics, discourse analysis, narrative research, or video ethnography.
• Proficiency with qualitative analysis tools: Dovetail, NVivo, MAXQDA, Atlas.ti, Reduct.
• Experience building or managing qualitative research panels or longitudinal participant communities.
• Published work or conference presentations in a qualitative research or HCI venue.

Why This Role at Superbet

Sports is one of the richest contexts for qualitative research: the experience is emotionally intense, socially embedded, culturally specific, and morally complex. Users have contradictory motivations. Their stated and actual behaviour diverge. The moments of joy and frustration are extreme. Understanding all of this deeply, not just what users click, but why they feel what they feel - is what separates good product decisions from great ones.

• Access to a diverse, passionate user base across 12+ markets - every cultural context brings new research challenges.
• A team that values qualitative rigour and won't ask you to reduce everything to a number.
• Senior visibility: your insights will be read by the CPO and product leadership, not just deposited in a repo.
• A Principal Quant Researcher as a genuine peer - someone to build with, argue with, and create better mixed-methods evidence with.
• Competitive compensation at Staff IC level with equity and a genuine investment in your development as a researcher.