Production and process engineers
Production and process engineers advise on and direct technical aspects of production programmes to ensure cost-effectiveness and efficiency. This unit group incorporates: planning and quality control engineers who plan production schedules, work sequences, and manufacturing and processing procedures to ensure accuracy, quality and reliability; and chemical engineers who undertake research on commercial scale chemical processes and processed products, design and provide specifications and direct the construction, operation, maintenance and repair of chemical plants and control systems.
- Employees (UK)
- 53k
- Median annual pay
- £47,711
- Exposure score ?
- 1.9/10 Minimal 9.3/10 Very high strict reading, with tools is 9.3/10 with-tools reading, strict is 1.9/10
- Wage exposure
- £480m £2.35bn
Higher exposure than 79% of the 379 UK occupations we scored.
What this score means.
Most of this role's work is still hard for AI: physical presence, practised skill, judgement in context and direct care, the things that do not turn into text.
If you are in this role
Nothing here is under pressure today, but the frontier moves. Learn enough to direct AI at the paperwork around the job. People in hands-on roles who can do that become unusually useful inside their organisations.
Almost every routine task in this role is within reach of today's models. Roles like this are being rebuilt, usually not by disappearing but by one person using AI to produce what several did.
If you are in this role
Be the person doing the rebuilding. People who learn to run this kind of work with AI become very valuable, and the ones who wait tend to have the change made for them.
Where the work usually starts.
These are the most important tasks a language model can already handle directly. In a typical engagement the first wins come from building workflows around them, so they stop eating the team's time.
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Conduct interviews or surveys of users or customers to collect information on topics, such as requirements, needs, fatigue, ergonomics, or interfaces.
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Prepare reports or presentations summarizing results or conclusions of human factors engineering or ergonomics activities, such as testing, investigation, or validation.
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Write, review, or comment on documents, such as proposals, test plans, or procedures.
These are the most important tasks AI can already handle when paired with the right tools and context. The first wins usually come from building workflows around them. That is the difference between a model that could do the job and one that actually does it inside your business.
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Collect data through direct observation of work activities or witnessing the conduct of tests.
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Conduct interviews or surveys of users or customers to collect information on topics, such as requirements, needs, fatigue, ergonomics, or interfaces.
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Advocate for end users in collaboration with other professionals, including engineers, designers, managers, or customers.
Every role has three or four places like these. Finding them takes an hour. Turning them into a workflow your team actually uses takes a few days.
Every task in the role.
Every O*NET task for this occupation, split by what AI can do unaided and what still needs a person. Importance is O*NET's 1 to 5 rating of how central each task is.
Tasks via O*NET "Human Factors Engineers and Ergonomists" (17-2112.01).
What AI can already do
4 of 26 tasks, unaided
Conduct interviews or surveys of users or customers to collect information on topics, such as requirements, needs, fatigue, ergonomics, or interfaces.
Prepare reports or presentations summarizing results or conclusions of human factors engineering or ergonomics activities, such as testing, investigation, or validation.
Write, review, or comment on documents, such as proposals, test plans, or procedures.
Perform statistical analyses, such as social network pattern analysis, network modeling, discrete event simulation, agent-based modeling, statistical natural language processing, computational sociology, mathematical optimization, or systems dynamics.
What still needs a person
22 of 26 tasks
Collect data through direct observation of work activities or witnessing the conduct of tests.
Advocate for end users in collaboration with other professionals, including engineers, designers, managers, or customers.
Inspect work sites to identify physical hazards.
Recommend workplace changes to improve health and safety, using knowledge of potentially harmful factors, such as heavy loads or repetitive motions.
Perform functional, task, or anthropometric analysis, using tools, such as checklists, surveys, videotaping, or force measurement.
Provide technical support to clients through activities, such as rearranging workplace fixtures to reduce physical hazards or discomfort or modifying task sequences to reduce cycle time.
Assess the user-interface or usability characteristics of products.
Establish system operating or training requirements to ensure optimized human-machine interfaces.
Integrate human factors requirements into operational hardware.
Review health, safety, accident, or worker compensation records to evaluate safety program effectiveness or to identify jobs with high incidence of injury.
Design or evaluate human work systems, using human factors engineering and ergonomic principles to optimize usability, cost, quality, safety, or performance.
Train users in task techniques or ergonomic principles.
Conduct research to evaluate potential solutions related to changes in equipment design, procedures, manpower, personnel, or training.
Provide human factors technical expertise on topics, such as advanced user-interface technology development or the role of human users in automated or autonomous sub-systems in advanced vehicle systems.
Develop or implement human performance research, investigation, or analysis protocols.
Develop or implement research methodologies or statistical analysis plans to test and evaluate developmental prototypes used in new products or processes, such as cockpit designs, user workstations, or computerized human models.
Estimate time or resource requirements for ergonomic or human factors research or development projects.
Design cognitive aids, such as procedural storyboards or decision support systems.
Analyze complex systems to determine potential for further development, production, interoperability, compatibility, or usefulness in a particular area, such as aviation.
Investigate theoretical or conceptual issues, such as the human design considerations of lunar landers or habitats.
Operate testing equipment, such as heat stress meters, octave band analyzers, motion analysis equipment, inclinometers, light meters, thermoanemometers, sling psychrometers, or colorimetric detection tubes.
Apply modeling or quantitative analysis to forecast events, such as human decisions or behaviors, the structure or processes of organizations, or the attitudes or actions of human groups.
Tasks via O*NET "Human Factors Engineers and Ergonomists" (17-2112.01).
What AI can already do
23 of 26 tasks, with tools
Collect data through direct observation of work activities or witnessing the conduct of tests.
Conduct interviews or surveys of users or customers to collect information on topics, such as requirements, needs, fatigue, ergonomics, or interfaces.
Advocate for end users in collaboration with other professionals, including engineers, designers, managers, or customers.
Inspect work sites to identify physical hazards.
Prepare reports or presentations summarizing results or conclusions of human factors engineering or ergonomics activities, such as testing, investigation, or validation.
Recommend workplace changes to improve health and safety, using knowledge of potentially harmful factors, such as heavy loads or repetitive motions.
Perform functional, task, or anthropometric analysis, using tools, such as checklists, surveys, videotaping, or force measurement.
Provide technical support to clients through activities, such as rearranging workplace fixtures to reduce physical hazards or discomfort or modifying task sequences to reduce cycle time.
Assess the user-interface or usability characteristics of products.
Establish system operating or training requirements to ensure optimized human-machine interfaces.
Review health, safety, accident, or worker compensation records to evaluate safety program effectiveness or to identify jobs with high incidence of injury.
Design or evaluate human work systems, using human factors engineering and ergonomic principles to optimize usability, cost, quality, safety, or performance.
Write, review, or comment on documents, such as proposals, test plans, or procedures.
Conduct research to evaluate potential solutions related to changes in equipment design, procedures, manpower, personnel, or training.
Provide human factors technical expertise on topics, such as advanced user-interface technology development or the role of human users in automated or autonomous sub-systems in advanced vehicle systems.
Develop or implement human performance research, investigation, or analysis protocols.
Develop or implement research methodologies or statistical analysis plans to test and evaluate developmental prototypes used in new products or processes, such as cockpit designs, user workstations, or computerized human models.
Estimate time or resource requirements for ergonomic or human factors research or development projects.
Design cognitive aids, such as procedural storyboards or decision support systems.
Analyze complex systems to determine potential for further development, production, interoperability, compatibility, or usefulness in a particular area, such as aviation.
Investigate theoretical or conceptual issues, such as the human design considerations of lunar landers or habitats.
Perform statistical analyses, such as social network pattern analysis, network modeling, discrete event simulation, agent-based modeling, statistical natural language processing, computational sociology, mathematical optimization, or systems dynamics.
Apply modeling or quantitative analysis to forecast events, such as human decisions or behaviors, the structure or processes of organizations, or the attitudes or actions of human groups.
What still needs a person
3 of 26 tasks
Integrate human factors requirements into operational hardware.
Train users in task techniques or ergonomic principles.
Operate testing equipment, such as heat stress meters, octave band analyzers, motion analysis equipment, inclinometers, light meters, thermoanemometers, sling psychrometers, or colorimetric detection tubes.
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Related occupations.
Other roles in Professional occupations, and roles close by exposure.
What it means for your sector.
This role's score comes from Eloundou et al's 2023 task labels, weighted by O*NET importance within each O*NET-SOC code, then bridged to UK SOC 2020 through ISCO-08 (the ONS coding index) and US SOC 2010 (the BLS crosswalk). Employment and median pay come from ONS ASHE Table 14.7a, 2025 provisional, which covers employees only.
Back to the mapMethodologySources (PDF)Built 29 April 2026
Pictures
- "Census pantograph and 1930s keypunches" by U.S. Census Bureau employees, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- "Shepard Barclay, St. Louis lawyer, in his office" by Missouri Historical Society via DPLA, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
- "Accountant's Office LCCN2016824374" by National Photo Company Collection, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- "Employment service in Oulu in the spring 1931" by Finnish Heritage Agency (Museovirasto), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons