Lead User Researcher

We’re looking for a Lead/Principal User Researcher to join our Product Design team and establish, lead, and champion research at Yoto across both hardware and software.

This is a senior, high‑impact role for someone who wants to define what great research looks like in a growing, product‑led company, not inherit a mature function. As Yoto’s first dedicated researcher, you’ll shape how research fits into product development, how decisions are informed, and how insight compounds over time.

You’ll operate as a practice leader and hands‑on researcher, working closely with designers, product managers, engineers, and a Research Ops partner. You’ll help teams ask better questions, make better trade‑offs, and build confidence in evidence, while keeping pace with a fast‑moving, ambitious organisation.

This role is critical to helping Yoto create products that genuinely support creative play, learning, and independence for children.

Yoto is a screen‑free interactive audio platform for kids. We make carefully connected audio players that kids control, with no microphones, cameras or ads. We have a catalogue of audio that inspires creative play and learning with 1,000+ titles in our card store from top creators, publishers and labels - think Disney, Marvel, Roald Dahl and Universal Music. We also create Yoto Originals like Brain Bots.

• Voted the 14th fastest‑growing private software technology company in Britain in The Sunday Times 100 Tech 2025; and named the 94th fastest‑growing company in Europe in the prestigious FT1000.
• Ranked 9th in Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in 2024; and featured in the Sifted 100 fastest‑growing startups across the UK&I by revenue growth.
• Featured in Bloomberg’s 25 UK startups to watch in 2023; and ranked second fastest growing tech company in the UK in the Deloitte Fast
  50.
• Named one of TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Inventions of 2020.
• We’re over 200 employees spread across the world.. and growing!

We’re on a mission to be the soundtrack of childhood, and help families on their own unique adventures. By creating products that inspire independent play, we help families discover and grow with an inspiring world of audio - and we would like you to help us achieve it!

Product Design at Yoto exists to deeply understand children and families and translate those insights into thoughtful, trusted, screen‑free experiences across hardware, software, and content.

As Yoto grows and our products become more complex, building a strong, credible research practice is a key priority. Research at Yoto is already fairly democratised, with designers actively involved in learning from customers. This role builds on that foundation, raising the bar for quality, judgement, and impact, while preserving team ownership and momentum.

• Establishing and owning the research practice at Yoto, defining principles, standards, and ways of working that balance rigour with the pace of a fast‑moving product organisation.
• Taking accountability for research impact, ensuring insights meaningfully shape product direction, prioritisation, and roadmap decisions, not just inform them.
• Leading strategic, discovery‑focused research to inform major initiatives such as the future of our physical hardware, Yoto Club, content discovery, and the evolution of our app and services.
• Designing and running a wide range of studies, from in‑home and ethnographic research with families, to usability testing, interviews, diary studies, surveys, and mixed‑method work for both software and hardware products.
• Partnering closely with designers, product managers, and engineers, helping teams frame the right questions, choose appropriate methods, and apply research at the right moments.
• Supporting and upskilling designers to plan and conduct effective research themselves, raising the overall research capability of the Product Design team.
• Synthesising complex findings into clear, compelling narratives, tailored to different audiences, including senior leaders, to drive alignment and action.
• Creating and maintaining shared research artefacts, such as customer archetypes, insight repositories, and…