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Location: Reading, United Kingdom

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible.

Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

Primary Purpose of the Role:

In fast changing markets, customers worldwide rely on Thales. Thales is a business where brilliant people from all over the world come together to share ideas and inspire each other. In aerospace, transportation, defence, security and space, our architects design innovative solutions that make our tomorrow's possible. Together we offer fantastic opportunities for committed employees to learn and develop their career with us. At Thales UK, we research, develop, and supply technology and services that impact the lives of millions of people each day to make life better, and keep us safer. We innovate across five major industries; Aerospace, Defence, Ground Transportation, Security and Space. Your health and well-being matters to us and that’s why we offer you the flexibility to do what’s important to you; whether that’s part time hours, job sharing, home working, or the ability to flex your start and finish times. Where possible, we support a working pattern that suits your lifestyle and helps you reach your ambitions.

The RTI (Research, Technology and Innovation) function is at the centre of Thales UK supporting growth in all of the key market areas, and spearheading activity into future markets identified as growth opportunities. RTI achieves this by:

• Understanding and helping to shape the trends that will change our markets in the future
• Finding opportunities for growing new businesses in Thales in the future Incubating new offerings, technologies and strategies on behalf of Thales business
• Brining all of Thales’ talents and technology to bear on every task
• Being 'black belts' at deploying the right innovation approaches and tools for each task

Creating an environment where staff find working with RTI an enjoyable, empowering and creative experience. As a key capability in RTI, the Human Factors Team are responsible for shaping the future user experience of Thales technology– as a Human Factors Researcher you will be leading our efforts to integrate new technology with users in a range of complex environments, including the challenge of AI integration into systems, novel user interfaces and technology using ‘human-machine teaming’ concepts. The goal is to create technology and a user experience that drives forward Thales as a business and develops technical capability across Thales’ existing and future market segments.

Key responsibilities:

• Represent Thales as a Human Factors & User Centred Design Champion, both within Thales and externally with existing and future customers.
• Apply insights from the human sciences, including qualitative or quantitative research methods and UX/design thinking approaches, to understand and solve problems.
• Implement experiments characterized by ongoing informed consent, quick cycle times, and qualitative research insight generation.
• Lead internal and external “guerrilla usability” evaluations of equipment, software tools and processes.
• Co-lead design sessions, workshops and contribute to prototype design. Design, conduct, and analyse experiments with learners.
• Collaborate engineering team members as they conduct design-based research and rapidly iterate prototypes.
• Sensitively interact, in-person and online, with Thales team members, and external contacts, customer or users
• Conceptualize, write, and deliver qualitative learning research suitable for publication.
• Assist Thales Design Centre London team in setting technical strategy and provide innovation services on projects in close collaboration with business units. Liaise with external technology developers and experts to understand market and technology developments in user centred design, User Experience or human factors, pan domain.
• Begin to develop your own external contacts within Human Factors and R&D, focusing on user interface design and human factors, attending
• Provide thought leadership in new and active technology and business areas to meet the needs of Thales UK.

Skills:

Essential

• 1-5 years-experience in a technical role - having specialised in one or more of the following areas:

o Human Factors o User Experience

o Applied Psychology

o User centred design

o System Engineering

• Prior experience of defence projects and working on Human Factors Integration (HFI) activities – knowledge and experience of JSP 912, DefStan 00-251 and relevant ISO standards
• Excellent communication skills - being able to communicate complex concepts clearly, interactively, and persuasively to a range of different audiences.
• Ability or willingness to learn how use rapid prototyping tools, such as Balsamiq, Adobe XD and other audio/visual tools to communicate concepts
• Ability to demonstrate leadership of a project, including management of that project [administrative and financial]
• Ability to demonstrate a track-record of independent work with supervision/support from a senior Human Factors specialist
• Able to demonstrate an aptitude for designing user interfaces or systems that can solved real world problems
• Ability to apply a range of human factors methods and tools such as task analysis, workstation and workstation design, control room design, workload assessment, HCI/HMI design and assessment, user-testing, Human Reliability Assessment (HRA), manpower assessment, and Training Needs Analysis (TNA).

Desirable

• Ability to contribute to Bid-writing and interactions with customers/business development activities
• Experience working in an Innovation Environment and knowledge of current Innovation methodologies such as Lean Start-Up, Sprint, Co-Creation, Design Thinking
• User Testing - experiencing of designing and conducting complex user testing • Workshop facilitation – experience of conducting workshops with a wide range of user groups, using the sessions to understand
• Interview techniques – must have the ability to engage with users and be able to quickly understand their role and where their experiences with technology or processes can be optimised

Behaviours we are looking for - Who You Are

• You love to learn and are open to taking on tasks outside you normal skill set, happy to learn as you go – training and support will always be provided to you. • Have a real passion for empathising with learners, helping others to express their issues with equipment/software and ability to develop ‘real trust’ with users. Willingness engage with users when they have difficult or challenge problems and may have experienced some negative event, you will have the ability to use tact and judgement in how you approach these situations.
• You’re passionate about research-driven learning and basing decisions on the best evidence you have available. You will also have an understanding that sometimes little or incomplete evidence is available and trusting yourself to make a decision anyway in these situation and adapting to any outcome
• Ability to work with ambiguity – due to our R&D work and early stage interventions, the work we do as a team can sometimes be less well defined, or for us as a team to define. You will be flexible in your approach to problems and willing to adapt to changes. You will also have the ability to take onboard feedback and respond positively, not fearing a proactive approach and seeking help from others when needed. Most importantly, you will be a person who is not struggles to adapt to change.
• You will have the ability to work without supervision and have an entrepreneur’s spirit – willing to try new things and take on responsibility. We aim to encourage our staff to follow their passions, and expect you to be clear in how you want to develop and the types of work you want to be involved in.

Qualifications:

• A BSc or MSc in Psychology, Ergonomics, Human Factors or other relevant human science
• BEng Engineering with experience of Human Factors
• Willingness to work towards Chartership in a relevant area (Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors or British Psychological Society, for example)

In line with Thales' Baseline Security requirements, candidates will be asked to provide evidence of identity, eligibility to work in the UK and employment and/or education history for up to three years. Some vacancies may require full Security Clearance which can require further evidence to be provided. For further details of the evidence required to apply for Baseline and Security Clearance please refer to the Defence Business Services National Security Vetting (DBS NSV) Agency.

At Thales we provide CAREERS and not only jobs. With Thales employing 80,000 employees in 68 countries our mobility policy enables thousands of employees each year to develop their careers at home and abroad, in their existing areas of expertise or by branching out into new fields. Together we believe that embracing flexibility is a smarter way of working.

Thales UK is committed to providing an inclusive and barrier-free recruitment process. We will provide reasonable adjustments and support to ensure neuro-diverse applicants or those with a disability or long-term condition can be their best during the recruitment process. To request an adjustment, if you need this job advert in an alternative format or if you have any questions about the recruitment process, please contact Resourcing Ops for mid to senior roles, or the Early Careers Team for graduate and apprentice roles.

Great journeys start here, apply now!