Kasey Dixon started her career in the Army, where she was an aircraft mechanic specializing in armament and avionics systems on the AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopter. Her experiences put her on the path of engineering and human factors.
“I would say the challenges I experienced conducting maintenance in the forward deployed environment, also using the helmet-mounted displays, interacting with mission systems, things like that really transformed the way I thought about human factors. And it inspired me to make a career pivot into the engineering side. I really wanted to have a hand in the design process so that I could actually influence the experience of users,” she said.
Now a human performance engineer with Lockheed Martin, Dixon works to optimize everything in the cockpit from a design standpoint.
“What that means is basically I work to optimize everything in the cockpit from a design standpoint. So, all of the human machine interface, anything that the pilot needs to interact with or use, that’s kind of our role to make sure that they’re most successful. A secondary role that I have is actually improving things like the maintainability of the aircraft,” she said. “So we do a lot of human factors consulting with mechanics and assemblers to ensure that they’ve got the tools they need.”
Dixon has served as the lead human factors SME, and Human System Integration lead across a number of programs at Lockheed Martin. She also worked as a manufacturing engineer supporting Sikorsky programs at GKN Aerospace, where she was the ergonomics safety chair, as well as the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) at Lockheed Martin.
She previously worked for technology startup SynapseMX, which creates intelligent maintenance productivity platforms for airlines and general aviation operations alike. She also provided technical customer support for the HondaJet at Cutter Aviation, where she managed AOG response and provided support to technicians.
“I used to really take for granted how interesting and dynamic my job was, but, now I always take a couple moments to soak in the sights and the sounds when I’m out on the flight line and just really be in the moment. I just love the work I do every day,” she said.
