Human Factors Scientist

At Idaho National Laboratory, your work will directly shape the future of critical operations by ensuring seamless human-technology interactions in high-stakes environments like nuclear energy, space exploration, and national security. By applying cutting-edge human factors research, you'll enhance system reliability and Optimize performance, supporting INL’s legacy of driving innovation and technological leadership. Your contributions will help define the principles that safeguard America’s most vital infrastructure and empower breakthroughs in energy and defense technologies.

Join a team that’s pioneering solutions to the nation’s toughest challenges, where your expertise makes a tangible impact on safety and efficiency.

Idaho National Laboratory is hiring a Human Factors Researcher to work on our Human Factors and Reliability team. Our team works a 9x80 schedule located out of our Engineering Research Office Building (EROB) facility with every other Friday off.

The Human Factors and Reliability team is focused on cutting-edge research to enable human-centered design for nuclear plant optimization, advanced reactors, complex energy systems, and emerging artificial intelligence and automation technologies by utilizing INL’s world-class capabilities and simulation environments.

As an INL human factors scientist you will leverage advanced human factors techniques to drive research projects and contribute to scientific publications. You will act as a human factors expert on multi-disciplinary teams providing state-of-the‑art strategies and methodologies to enable human‑centered design and experimental validation for a variety of applied energy technologies. You will report to the manager for our Human Factors and Reliability team.

• Develop and implement advanced human factors approaches to support research initiatives.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to design and execute experiments, analyze complex datasets, validate approaches, and interpret results.
• Design human-computer interfaces and human-machine interfaces for complex energy systems, including nuclear reactor control environments.
• Use human factors methods to evaluate, rigorously test, and validate AI and machine learning tools for high consequence use cases.
• Publish research findings in peer-reviewed journals and present at scientific conferences.
• Work with a multi-disciplinary team of scientists and engineers on challenging work scope.
• Stay current with the latest advancements in human factors and relevant applied energy domains.
• Mentor and guide junior researchers and interns in human factors approaches, methodologies and best practices.
• Demonstrate effective research skills and the ability to collaborate and partner with other government agencies, academia, and private sector companies to achieve project objectives.
• Contribute to proposal development and secure new research funding.
• Work effectively with research teams to develop and manage cross‑cutting technical programs for a variety of customers.

• Level 3:
  Bachelor of Science degree in human factors, experimental psychology, industrial engineering, human-computer interaction, or a related scientific/engineering field and 5 years of relevant experience; or a Masters of Science degree in human factors, experimental psychology, industrial engineering, human‑computer interaction, or a related scientific/engineering field and 2 years of relevant experience; or a PhD in human factors, experimental psychology, industrial engineering, human‑computer interaction, or a related scientific/engineering field and 2 years of relevant experience
• Level 4:
  Bachelor of Science degree in human factors, experimental psychology, industrial engineering, human‑computer interaction, or a related scientific/engineering field and 9 years of relevant experience; or a Masters of Science degree in human factors, experimental psychology, industrial engineering, human‑computer interaction, or a related scientific/engineering field and 6 years of relevant experience; or a PhD in human factors, experimental psychology, industrial engineering, human‑computer interaction, or a…