Head of Research Craft

• Salary:
  Annual fixed, with modest annual performance-related bonus
• Format:
  Full-time, permanent
• Location:
  
  Location/timezone compatible with our teams in the UK and Eastern Canada.
• Reports to:
  
  Managing Director
• Applications close:
  January 26th 2026

At Player Research we want the world to experience brilliant games; ones full of adventure, surprise and intrigue – the ones you can’t put down, and those you talk about for days.

Across the world we partner with game development teams to realise their creative visions by providing meaningful insight into how real players experience play.

We are the world’s premier partner for games user research. From our Brighton and Montreal studios we design and conduct award-winning user experience studies for video games: usability testing, expert reviews, engagement diaries, full playthroughs, training courses, accessibility testing… and so much more.

We uncover insights that drive game development forward.

As an external research studio we collaborate far and wide: game developers, publishers, platform owners, incubators, indies, and beyond. Around one third of our projects are commissioned by games user research teams inside studios and publishers, trusting us to extend their reach and capabilities.

Hundreds of game development studios rely on our insights into usability, UX, appeal, and play.

Our projects come in all shapes and sizes, from testing user interfaces to interviewing super-fans; game console UI improvement, to toys-to-life; AAA full-playthroughs, discovery research, difficulty balancing, narrative comprehension, and so much more. Our consultant Researchers are brought into the heart of design decision-making in projects of all types. Some spanning years of development, some as one-off studies.

We are exceptionally proud of our fifteen year-long reputation for authenticity, transparency and rigour. And we’d love to make you a part of it.

We’re seeking a Head of Research Craft to own the technical skills growth of our consultant games user research team globally, and help us ‘raise the bar’ of research quality in our influential business.

This is an established role, developing under your guidance.

Head of Research Craft is a central role to the functioning of Player Research, working with Leadership, Client Relationship Managers, and User Researchers. Within this role you will help define and implement the strategic initiatives that drive growth in our staff and across our business.

You are passionate about achieving excellence from research teams and lead by example to promote a culture of learning and improvement.

You’ll be on-the-job coaching, soliciting feedback, designing and executing internal and external training activities, and implementing your own initiatives for continual improvement. You’ll get stuck into projects as a trusted advisor coaching our busy research teams.

Our Head of Research Craft is a domain expert and contributes continually to our research projects and processes, ensuring they’re rigorous, impactful, and efficient, while being unafraid to push boundaries and experiment.

You’ll be instrumental in balancing consistency with creativity and innovation in our approaches: delivering to the fullest potential of the method, the project team, and our client’s research opportunity.

By involving yourself in key research projects – either actively as a lead or passively as a mentor – your influence will accelerate the domain growth of staff, and shape the future of our service offerings.

You will naturally develop relationships with key clients by consultatively designing research strategies, and supporting the delivery of excellent research to plan. You’ll be an ambassador for our business, both project-to-project and in business development events and conferences.

The Head of Research Craft is a ‘dotted line’ manager for all games user researchers in the business. Full-time people management (‘solid line’) is owned by a People Manager. Our Head of Research Craft is responsible for providing guidance, mentorship, and performance evaluation on topics of research and technical skills for ~15 researchers globally.

Our…