Role details
Job description
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.
Role context
This Senior Engineer, Human Machine Teaming (R5651) role at Shield AI sits in the engineering track within defense and autonomy. The position is tied to Washington, DC, United States and is posted 4 days ago, which signals active hiring intent rather than archived demand. Compensation is not disclosed in the source listing, so candidates should verify range details directly with the employer. Combined with the live company and role links on this page, this listing gives candidates a direct path to compare equivalent openings by employer, market, and role focus.
Ready for the next step?
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Location
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Washington, DC, United States
Location
Washington, DC, United States
Approximate role location based on the employer listing.
Washington, DC, United States
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