How To Become A Human Factors Specialist: What It Is and Career Path

What is a human factors specialist and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted Expert

Del Ross

Essentially a Human Factors Specialist's job is to carry out research, reviews, and evaluations to collect valuable knowledge about goods or services. To do this, you conduct field studies, conduct interviews, evaluate the design's ergonomics and contrarily gather knowledge on the product's efficiency and utility.

To attain success in this role and ensure that everything runs well, you need to have a lot of expertise in all facets of the market. Subsequently, if you can establish yourself in the role, you can muster up a hefty pay that calculates to an average of $96,122 per year or $46 per hour.

This is quite a challenging role, with the scope to transform several employment sectors' working practices for the better. So if you're ready to take up the challenge, most companies probably have got a place for you as a Human Factors Specialist.

What general advice would you give to a Human Factors Specialist?

Del Ross

Chief Revenue Officer, Hotel Effectiveness

Embrace change. The only certainty about the future is that tomorrow's world will look much different than today's. This applies to the hotel and travel industries and to pretty much everything else. Guest expectations will change. Technology will change. The employer and employee experiences will vary - this may prove difficult, but much of it will be for the better. If you expect to change, you will be better prepared to handle it when it happens.

ScoreHuman Factors SpecialistUS Average

Salary

6.3

Avg. Salary $80,877

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

8.0

Growth Rate 8%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.64%

Asian 9.06%

Black or African American 11.78%

Hispanic or Latino 15.54%

Unknown 5.32%

White 57.66%

Gender

female 57.14%

male 42.86%

Age - 40

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 40

Stress Level

8.0

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

8.3

Complexity Level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

7.0

Work Life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a human factors specialist

Explore human factors specialist education requirements

Most common human factors specialist degrees

Bachelor's

68.2 %

Master's

18.9 %

Associate

9.5 %

Start to develop specific human factors specialist skills

Skills	Percentages
User Research	18.27%
User Interface	14.52%
Industrial Design	12.08%
Human Factors Research	8.84%
I-9	4.64%

Complete relevant human factors specialist training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New human factors specialists learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a human factors specialist based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real human factors specialist resumes.

Research human factors specialist duties and responsibilities

Reformat and manage team SharePoint page on support unit portal, providing increase accessibility and distribution of team products.
Integrate efforts on actions and programs where joint OPM functional effort are necessary to accomplish recruitment and enhance organizational effectiveness.
Process arrears payments for employees on LOA or FMLA and other leave as applicable.
Coordinate leaves of absence with appropriate laws such as FMLA, work comp and ADA.

Apply for human factors specialist jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a human factors specialist job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do human factors specialists rate their job?