Senior Engineer, Human Machine Teaming (R5651)

Shield AI; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Shield AI seeks an Engineer II or Senior Engineer to advance its Human Machine Teaming design capability. You will craft context-sensitive requirements, translate baselines into actionable design patterns, and collaborate with HMI/UX teams to improve operator-autonomy interactions.

Travel ~20% is expected for field work and demonstrations. The role emphasizes rigorous design guidance, standards, and traceability from concept to test, with a focus on human factors and cognitive performance in

Qualifications

• Degree in human factors, psychology, cognitive systems, or related field.
• Experience translating HMT experiments into design guidance and system requirements.
• Knowledge of human-machine teaming, human factors theory, and measurement.
• Experience with quasi-/experimental design and multivariate statistics (SPSS, R, Python).
• Ability to work across multidisciplinary teams in ambiguous spaces.

Responsibilities

• Develop baseline collaborative work requirement profiles and variants.
• Define operator-autonomy requirements and document mission risks.
• Map profiles to systems engineering requirements and maintain traceability.
• Collaborate with UX/UI to translate requirements into design guidance.
• Present designs and evidence to stakeholders; travel ~20%.

Skills

Human factors engineering

HMT design

System requirements translation

Communication skills

Python

SPSS

R

Figma

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Human Factors or related field

Master’s degree or PhD with experience

Tools

Figma

Prototyping tools

Modeling & simulation tools

Job description

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.

Job Description:

The Human Machine Teaming (HMT) Group at Shield AI is hiring an Engineer II or Senior Engineer to join our HMT Design capability. At Shield AI, HMT refers to the design, management, and assurance of the adaptive relationships between operators and Hivemind-enabled mission autonomy—not just an interface problem, or a function-allocation exercise. Across industry, HMT is often an ad hoc practice, staffed with HMI/UX/UI rather than HMT specialists. In this role, you will implement a systematic, standardized, yet context-sensitive approach to HMT design that is both scalable and traceable in practice.

Working alongside the HMT Design Lead, who owns the collaborative work requirement profile generation process, you will determine HMT-specific requirements across use cases, identify contextual factors that moderate requirements, and translate baselines into context-sensitive design patterns that support adaptivity. You will work with other HMT capabilities to design scenarios, refine testing procedures, and generate HMI feature requests that improve collaboration.

If you want to define how an entire company designs operator-autonomy relationships rather than one interface at a time, this is your opportunity to make a lasting and scalable impact.

What you’ll do:

• Build and maintain baseline collaborative work requirement profiles for core operational functions, and generate profile variants for edge and off-nominal cases.
• Define requirements profiles by the operator-autonomy relationship, and document the associated mission risks.
• Classify the degree of operator-autonomy interdependency for a given function, task, or mission thread, and make hard and soft dependencies explicit.
• Map requirements profiles to systems engineering requirements and feature requests, and maintain traceability from operational need through test and acceptance.
• Evolve a repeatable HMT workflow, including HMT standards, design patterns, and review criteria, and co-create a shared HMT body of knowledge.
• Collaborate with HMI and UX/UI designers to turn requirements profiles into design guidance, review interface designs for mission planning, C2, and battle management tools, and with HMT staff to evaluate scenario designs, testing protocols, and outcomes.
• Advocate for human perceptual and cognitive considerations in sensemaking and decision-making tools, and ensure compliance with customer human factors standards.
• Present designs, rationale, and supporting evidence to multiple audiences, and review technical and systems engineering documentation.
• Travel to company, test, demonstration, and customer locations to conduct project work (approximately 20%).

Required qualifications:

• Engineer II: typically requires a minimum of 2 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 0 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD without experience. Senior Engineer: typically requires a minimum of 3–5 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 2–4 years and a Master’s degree; or 2 years with a PhD; or equivalent work experience.
• A degree in human factors engineering or psychology, cognitive systems engineering, applied cognitive science, industrial and systems engineering, or a related field.
• Demonstrated experience translating operational HMT experimentation into design guidance, and system requirements.
• Working knowledge of human machine teaming, human factors, and human performance theory and measurement, including cognitive task analysis and knowledge elicitation.
• Sound grasp of quasi-/experimental design, experience conducting human participants research, and proficiency with multivariate statistical analyses and tools (e.g., SPSS, R, Python).
• Experience in multidisciplinary settings, and ability to work in complex, ambiguous problem spaces and produce clear and structured artifacts.
• Strong teamwork and collaboration skills, and written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred qualifications:

• Hands-on experience with human machine teaming, MUM-T, human-robot interaction, or applied artificial intelligence, specifically in mission autonomy applications such as UAV Groups 1–5.
• Experience with human-machine interface design and proficiency with Figma or an equivalent prototyping toolset.
• Experience in scenario design, and with modeling and simulation tools and methods.
• Experience with mission planning, C2, and battle management concepts, processes, and doctrine, and with ground control stations or HMIs.
• Experience authoring design standards, style guides, or review criteria adopted by other teams.
• Familiarity with traceability methods, or with AI assurance frameworks.
• Willingness to use agentic AI to speed the path from design concept to fielded product.
• Prior work with military operators, pilots, or subject matter experts, or an aircrew background.
• U.S. DoD Secret clearance eligible, with the ability to obtain and maintain Top Secret, SCI, and/or SAP-level access. U.S. citizenship required.

$140,000 - $210,000 a year

Full-time regular employee offer package:

Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity

Temporary employee offer package:

Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)

Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.

Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed toequal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.