Senior AI Engineer – Human–AI Systems

Description

Who We Are

Aptima is a technological leader in the national security industry. Our mission is to drive the future of national security by engineering scalable solutions that fuse technological innovation with human potential to transform how individuals and teams train, develop, and perform in mission-critical environments.

Our culture is rooted in our core values, which have evolved over time and our employees have embraced: Integrity, Ingenuity, Excellence, Respect, Engagement, Teamwork. At our core, Aptima researches, develops, and innovates within an area that engineering firms largely ignore, the human component. To impact the world in meaningful ways, you must bring those innovations to light, and that is precisely what we do.

How You’ll Make an Impact

The Senior AI Engineer – Human–AI Systems leads the design and technical execution of AI-enabled systems that integrate human cognition, behavior, and team dynamics with machine intelligence for Department of War applications. This role combines expertise in human–AI interaction and cognitive/behavioral science with applied AI system design and project leadership, serving as a technical lead on multidisciplinary programs and coordinating the work of AI engineers and researchers. The position emphasizes human-centered system design requirements, rigorous evaluation of human–AI performance, and translation of mission needs into operationally effective capabilities, while contributing to proposals, customer engagements, and internal technical excellence.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design of human–AI teaming concepts, interaction workflows, and mixed-initiative system behaviors for DoW applications.
• Understand the science that can inform requirements addressing trust, explainability, cognitive workload, team coordination, and teams science.
• Serve as technical lead or task lead on AI and human–AI system development efforts, coordinating work across AI engineers and researchers.
• Translate mission needs and human performance objectives into system requirements, technical architectures, and evaluation plans. Review and guide system implementations to ensure usability, explainability, and operational suitability.
• Design and execute human-subject experiments and quantitative studies to evaluate trust, workload, decision quality, team effectiveness, and system impact.
• Design, develop, and oversee analytic pipelines and performance metrics to operationalize complex behavioral and organizational constructs using real-world data.
• Translate quantitative results into clear, actionable insights for technical teams, behavioral scientists, and government stakeholders, bridging theory, data, and system implementation.
• Lead technical contributions to proposals, system designs, and customer deliverables. Present technical work internally and at relevant external forums to include conferences, customer briefings, and other venues.
• Mentor junior staff and promote best practices in human-centered AI system development. Contribute to internal initiatives for AI system development and evaluation.
  
  

Requirements

• MS or PhD in cognitive psychology, human factors/HCI, AI/computer science (with human–AI focus), systems engineering, psychology/IO or related field.
• Demonstrated expertise in the science of human cognition, team dynamics, trust in automation, human–AI interaction, and applied behavioral science.
• Strong quantitative modeling and statistical analysis background, including experimental design, regression modeling (linear, generalized, mixed-effects), multivariate analysis, psychometric modeling, and simulation (e.g., Monte Carlo methods).
• Proficiency in Python and/or R for data analysis, modeling, simulation, visualization, and development of reproducible analytic workflows.
• Experience developing custom metrics, indices, and analytic pipelines to operationalize complex behavioral, organizational, or team constructs using real-world, imperfect data.
• Experience designing and executing human-subject experiments and analyzing performance data.
• Experience leading technical tasks or serving as technical lead or deputy PI on government-funded programs.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including proposal and customer-facing technical work.
• Proven ability to translate quantitative results into clear, actionable insights for technical teams, behavioral scientists, and non-technical stakeholders, serving as a bridge between disciplines.
• Ability to manage and coordinate multidisciplinary technical teams.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance; familiarity with DoW research environments preferred.