Human factors engineer

at  Thales

Location: Reading, United Kingdom
In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow’s possible.
Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

ABOUT YOU

• Have a real passion for empathizing with our end users, helping others to express their issues with equipment/software and ability to develop ‘real trust’ with users.
• Willingness to engage with users when they have difficult or challenge problems and may have experienced some negative event, you will have the ability to use tact and judgement in how you approach these situations.
• Ability to work with ambiguity – due to our R&D work and early stage interventions, the work we do as a team can sometimes be less well defined, or for us as a team to define. You will be flexible in your approach to problems and willing to adapt to changes. You will also have the ability to take on-board feedback and respond positively, not fearing a proactive approach and seeking help from others when needed. Most importantly, you will be a person who does not struggle to adapt to change.
• You will have the ability to work without supervision and have an entrepreneur’s spirit – willing to try new things and take on responsibility. We aim to encourage our staff to follow their passions, and expect you to be clear in how you would like to develop, the types of work you want to be involved in etc.

SKILLS:

• Excellent communication skills - being able to communicate complex concepts clearly, interactively, and persuasively to a range of different audiences.
• Ability or willingness to learn how use rapid prototyping tools, such as Figma, Balsamiq, Adobe XD and other audio/visual tools to communicate concepts.
• Ability to demonstrate leadership of a project, including management of that project [administrative and financial] – if you have no experience in this area, Thales will develop you in this area.
• Ability to demonstrate a track-record of independent work with supervision/support from a senior Human Factors specialist.
• Able to demonstrate an aptitude for designing user interfaces or systems that can solved real world problems.
• Ability to apply a range of human factors methods and tools such as task analysis, workstation and workstation design, control room design, workload assessment, HCI/HMI design and assessment, user-testing, Human Reliability Assessment (HRA), manpower assessment, and Training Needs Analysis (TNA).
  Experience:

Experience in a technical role - having specialised in one or more of the following areas:

• Human Factors
• User Experience
• Applied Psychology
• User centered design
• System Engineering

Desirable:

• Prior experience of defence projects and working on Human Factors Integration (HFI) activities – knowledge and experience of JSP 912, DefStan 00-251 and relevant ISO standards.

QUALIFICATIONS/

We are open to a candidate from a wide variety of backgrounds. Your qualifications may include:

• A BSc or MSc in Psychology, Sociology, Ergonomics, Human Factors or other relevant human science
• Bachelors in Engineering with experience of Human Factors or Developing user centric designs
• Willingness to work towards Chartership in a relevant area (Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors or British Psychological Society, for example)

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES & TASKS:

• This role is based in Research, Technology & Innovation (RTI), and will work with all areas of Thales, in the UK and with our other units worldwide. The group works for the CTO and is part of the Technical Directorate, providing an independent HMT/HF function from other groups within Thales UK.
• Represent Thales as a Human Factors & User Centred Design Champion, both within Thales and externally with existing and future customers.
• Apply insights from the human sciences, including qualitative or quantitative research methods and UX/design thinking approaches, to understand and solve problems.
• Implement experiments – these are likely to be fast-paced and agile research activities, rather than long-term experiments.
• Lead internal and external “guerrilla usability” evaluations of equipment, software tools and processes.
• Co-lead design sessions, workshops and contribute to prototype design. Design, conduct, and analyse experiments with end users of our systems.
• Collaborate engineering team members as they conduct design-based research and rapidly iterate prototypes.
• Sensitively interact, in-person and online, with Thales team members, and external contacts, customer or users.
• Plan, write, and deliver research outputs at a level suitable for publication
• Assist Thales Design Centre London team in setting technical strategy and provide innovation services on projects in close collaboration with business units. Liaise with external technology developers and experts to understand market and technology developments in user centred design, User Experience or human factors, pan domain. • Begin to develop your own external contacts within Human Factors and R&D, focusing on user interface design and human factors, attending.
• Provide thought leadership in new and active technology and business areas to meet the needs of Thales UK.

Experience in a technical role - having specialised in one or more of the following areas:

• Human Factors
• User Experience
• Applied Psychology
• User centered design
• System Engineerin