Lead Healthcare Human Factors Engineer

VHA supports and provides medical care for VA’s eligible beneficiaries through the VA health program, which includes VA Medical Centers (VAMCs) and contracted health care networks. The Office of Clinical Informatics within the Office of Health Informatics (OHI), Digital Health Office (DHO) advances the enterprise standard of care and patient experience using improved data, tools, and informatics processes organized around continuously delivering value to its customers. This is achieved through Lean-Agile delivery of clinical practice solutions that support best practice standards for clinical care. OHI is further responsible for ensuring the success of the modernized VA EHR, Oracle Health Millennium/Cerner through continuous exploration, integration, deployment and release on demand of Integrated Health Technology (IHT) solutions. These efforts aim to increase Veterans' access to care and support their active participation in their healthcare. Gritter Francona is looking for a Lead Human Factors Engineer to help support a potential project to assist this objective.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Leadership

• Serve as the HFE lead for the contract, owning the HFE strategy, roadmap, and quality bar for deliverables; establish HFE governance, definitions of ready/done, templates, and review gates.
• Translate state‑of‑the‑art research and industry trends in human factors, cognitive/organizational psychology, and clinical informatics into scalable methods and guidance for teams.
• Champion Lean‑Agile principles within a SAFe® environment, shaping ART ceremonies (PI Planning, System Demo, Inspect & Adapt) to drive value delivery and continuous improvement.

Research & Evaluation

• Plan and execute mixed‑methods research (contextual inquiry, cognitive task analysis, diary studies, think‑aloud protocols, surveys, card sorting, tree testing, formative/summative usability) tailored to risk and regulatory context.
• Design and conduct workflow analyses across clinical informatics domains (e.g., order entry, medication administration, care coordination, documentation, decision support) to identify latent conditions, handoff risks, and transient failure modes that evade unit testing.
• Apply advanced risk and resilience methods (e.g., FMEA/FMECA, STPA, bow‑tie analysis, FRAM, HFACS) to anticipate and mitigate human‑system hazards.

Design & Systems Impact

• Visualize and articulate system‑wide impacts of design changes on all user groups (end users, supervisors, support staff, patients, administrators).
• Recommend redesigns or operational mitigations to minimize negative outcomes when changes are constrained or products/processes are essential.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, clinical SMEs, and data teams to prototype designs (low‑ to high‑fidelity) and evaluate effects on safety, workflow, workload, and adoption.

Live Interaction & Enablement

• Provide thoughtful, actionable suggestions during live demo calls; adapt in real time to participant feedback in user sessions of any type (moderated, unmoderated, remote, in‑person).
• Mentor cross‑functional teams in HFE practices; deliver trainings and brown‑bag sessions to empower high‑performing Agile teams.

Measurement, Quality & Compliance

• Define and track HFE KPIs (e.g., task success, time‑on‑task, error rates, cognitive load, adoption, defect escape rate, alert fatigue indices).
• Produce clear, standards‑aligned HFE documentation (protocols, moderation guides, test plans, risk analyses, traceability matrices, usability engineering files, summative reports).
• Ensure alignment with applicable standards and guidance

Requirements

• Masters' degree
• 10+ years of experience in human factors engineering, with a strong record leading research, evaluations, and design for complex, safety‑critical or high‑reliability systems.
• Experience applying SAFe® Lean‑Agile principles and practices to drive value, sustain organizational change, and enable high‑performing Agile teams

Benefits

• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (401k, IRA)
• Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
• Short Term & Long Term Disability
• Training & Development