Sr Human Factors Design Engineer

Intuitive; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Intuitive is seeking a Senior Human Factors Engineer to drive user-centered research and usability testing within its Human Factors team. You will partner with designers, clinicians, and engineers to guide development, assess use-related risks, and ensure products are feasible, viable, and desirable through rigorous formative research and testing.

The role requires conducting qualitative research to understand users, translating findings into usability requirements, and supporting design

Qualifications

• Experience leading user research and usability studies in medical/device contexts.
• Ability to translate user needs into usability requirements and risk analyses.
• Strong collaboration with design, engineering, and regulatory teams to support design controls.

Responsibilities

• Plan and conduct formative research and usability evaluations with prototypes.
• Analyze use-related risks and translate findings into design requirements.
• Advocate for safety, usability, and desirability of user experience across product development teams.
• Coordinate human factors efforts across multiple sub-systems and project timelines.

Skills

User research

Usability testing

Human factors engineering

Workflow analysis

Cross-functional collaboration

Regulatory experience

Job description

Job Description

Primary Function of the Position

As part of the Intuitive Human Factors team, the Senior Human Factors Engineer works closely with designers, clinical engineers, system and software engineers, technical product managers, regulatory affairs, and other important functional teams. The Senior Human Factors Engineer is a key contributor in informing and guiding development of new products, and ensuring that those products are feasible, viable and desirable.

As a member of new and sustaining product-development project teams, the Senior Human Factors Engineer leads as a key stakeholder within a creative and structured process to conduct user-centered design research, analyze and characterize use-related risks, conduct usability testing of products prior to launch, and track and iterate on designs once projects are in the field. They have primary responsibility for evaluating product designs with end-user test participants, and to conduct qualitative research to gain a deep understanding of users, uses and use environments; analyze and characterize usability considerations; conduct concept evaluations to realize the impact of design concepts on user workflow, behavior and performance; translate user needs into usability requirements; and develop new tools to measure UX and inform design.

Essential Job Duties

• Develop, position and execute end-to-end formative research plans within product development that are inclusive of user research, human performance research, as well as explorative co-creation and usability evaluations with prototypes of varying fidelity and resolution.


• Plan, collect and synthesize data to generate insights on how and why users interact with Intuitive products through various techniques including interviews, simulations, direct observations, task analysis, human performance research, persona development, usability testing, mixed methods research, discovery from known use problems, etc.


• Represent Intuitive during interactions with end-user clinicians and customers in multiple international markets to gather design insights in a highly professional manner, during formative research activities.


• De-risk design strategies by identifying root causes that account for human performance influencers underlying the user experience.


• Analyze, define and evaluate workflow and user interface designs. Negotiate design recommendations and improvements to prevent hazardous situations related to use errors and improve usability.


• Accountable for establishment, authoring and management of usability design inputs. Translate findings from formative research activities into insights that are used to define evidence-based user requirements and user interface design requirements to inform user interface design, labeling and training.


• Collaboratively develop conceptual prototypes that reflect performance influencers for showcasing and translating for stakeholders.


• Advocate for safety, usability and desirability of the user experience while balancing tradeoffs associated with project risks and product risks related to user needs and business needs.


• Analyze complaints from on-market products, identify, analyze and manage usability risk analysis, and elevate usability-related issues as necessary.


• Author and maintain human factors engineering documentation in support of design controls and regulatory submissions.


• Coordinate human factors efforts across projects involving several sub-systems.


• Manage usability engineering activities within development projects and provide schedules and status to product managers and engineering project managers.