Lead Human Factors Engineer

Leidos•Reston, VA

About The Position

Every day, more than 9 million Veterans rely on The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for their healthcare, supported by a nationwide health IT system. Leidos is supporting this transformation effort, offering an opportunity to make a direct impact on how care is delivered to those who’ve served. The Leidos Health & Services Sector is seeking a full-time Lead Human Factors Engineer (HFE) to support the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to help transform how it collects, manages, analyzes, and utilizes health data, to transform and improve care for Veterans. The HFE is the contract's senior expert in human systems integration and user experience design applied to healthcare information technology. In the context of TASK ORDER, Human Factors Engineering is not merely a usability function — it is a patient safety and clinical effectiveness discipline. Poorly designed clinical interfaces and workflows contribute directly to EHR-related clinical errors, clinician cognitive burden, and alert fatigue, all of which have documented adverse impacts on Veteran health outcomes. This individual leads all Human Factors Engineering and Human Systems Integration (HSI) activities on the task order, ensuring that clinical systems, informatics tools, and technology-enabled workflows are designed and evaluated to optimize human performance, minimize error risk, and meet Section 508 accessibility requirements. The Lead HFE works in close partnership with the Clinical Informatics Director, the Lead Health IT Informatics Analyst, and the Microsoft O365/Power Platform Lead to embed human-centered design principles throughout the program's informatics work.

Requirements

Master's degree in Human Factors Engineering, Cognitive Psychology, Industrial/Systems Engineering, Ergonomics, or a closely related field.
10 years’ experience in organizational psychology, research and industry trends and apply this state-of-the-art knowledge in findings and methods to devise strategies, evaluations, and designs to assess products and processes.
Have experience with and demonstrate understanding of SAFe®’s Lean Agile principles and practices to drive value and sustain organizational change and operational excellence through the empowering of high-performing Agile teams.
Demonstrated experience conducting usability evaluations, cognitive task analyses, and workflow analyses in healthcare settings.
Proficiency with usability testing methodologies, tools, and reporting frameworks.
Familiarity with Section 508 accessibility compliance requirements for federal electronic information technology.
Experience collaborating with multidisciplinary clinical and technical teams.
Strong written communication skills for preparing human factors test plans, evaluation reports, and design recommendations.

Nice To Haves

Ph.D. in Human Factors Engineering, Cognitive Systems Engineering, or Biomedical Informatics with human-computer interaction focus.
Certified Human Factors Professional (CHFP) from HFES or Certified Professional Ergonomist (CPE) from BCPE.
Prior experience conducting human factors evaluations of EHR systems (VistA/CPRS, Oracle Health Cerner Millennium, Epic, or equivalent).
Experience with VA usability evaluation programs or participation in VHA Clinical Decision Support (CDS) alert optimization initiatives.
Familiarity with FDA HF/UE regulatory guidance as applied to Software as a Medical Device (SaMD).
Experience applying SEIPS (Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety) or similar sociotechnical frameworks in healthcare system design.
Experience conducting remote usability testing across geographically distributed VA clinical sites.

Responsibilities

Lead and direct all Human Factors Engineering resources on the task order, setting technical standards, reviewing deliverables, and ensuring all human systems engineering work meets VA requirements and applicable industry standards (ANSI/HFES, ISO 9241, IEC 62366).
Design, conduct, and analyze usability studies, cognitive task analyses, heuristic evaluations, and contextual inquiries for EHR interfaces, clinical decision support alerts, clinical documentation templates, and informatics tools deployed within VA's health IT environment.
Develop human factors engineering plans, test protocols, usability evaluation reports, and design recommendations in accordance with FDA human factors guidance (where applicable) and VA user experience standards.
Conduct workflow analyses using established methodologies (e.g., GOMS, hierarchical task analysis, cognitive walkthrough) to identify human-system interaction risks and opportunities for workflow optimization in clinical environments.
Collaborate with the Clinical Informatics Director to evaluate clinician cognitive burden associated with EHR alert configurations, order set designs, and documentation requirements, recommending evidence-based optimization strategies.
Support Section 508 compliance reviews of all digital health tools, informatics applications, and technology-enabled clinical products developed under the task order.
Facilitate participatory design sessions with VHA clinical users, including Veterans, nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and administrative staff, to co-develop user-centered solutions.
Develop personas, use case scenarios, task flows, wireframes, and prototypes to support iterative design and evaluation cycles.
Provide human factors expertise in the review and evaluation of commercial health IT product configurations to ensure alignment with evidence-based human-centered design principles.
Contribute to training material development by analyzing instructional design requirements through a human factors lens, ensuring training aligns with cognitive load principles and adult learning theory.