Cognitive systems engineering (CSE) is an interdisciplinary field that examines the intersection of people, work, and technology, with a particular focus on safety-critical systems. The central tenet of CSE is to treat collections of people and technologies as a single unified entity—called a joint cognitive system (JCS)—capable of performing cognitive work rather than as separate human and technological components. The field was formally established in the early 1980s by Erik Hollnagel and David Woods.

Unlike cognitive engineering, which primarily applies cognitive science to design technological systems that support user cognition, CSE takes a more holistic approach by analyzing how cognition is distributed across entire work systems. This perspective emphasizes understanding the functional relationships between humans and technology in complex operational environments such as air traffic control, medical systems, nuclear power plants, and other high-risk contexts.

CSE draws on theoretical foundations from multiple disciplines including cognitive psychology, cognitive anthropology, systems theory, and ecological psychology. Key intellectual influences include Edwin Hutchins's distributed cognition, James Gibson's ecological theory of visual perception, Ulric Neisser's perceptual cycle, and William Clancey's situated cognition. The field has also been shaped by Jens Rasmussen's work on human error and abstraction hierarchy.

Methodologically, CSE employs techniques such as cognitive task analysis, cognitive work analysis, and work domain analysis to understand how cognition is distributed across human and technological agents. These approaches focus on identifying system constraints and designing for resilience rather than merely preventing errors.

Cognitive systems engineering emerged in the wake of the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident. At the time, existing theories about safety were unable to explain how the operators at TMI could be confused about what was actually happening inside of the plant.

Following the accident, Jens Rasmussen did early research on cognitive aspects of nuclear power plant control rooms. This work influenced a generation of researchers who would later come to be associated with cognitive systems engineering, including Morten Lind, Erik Hollnagel, and David Woods.

Following the publication of a textbook on cognitive systems engineering by Kim Vicente in 1999 the techniques employed to establish a cognitive work analysis (CWA) were used to aid the design of any kind of system were humans have to interact with technology. The tools outlined by Vicente were not tried and tested, and there are few if any published accounts of the five phases of analysis being implemented.

The term "cognitive systems engineering" was introduced in a 1983 paper by Hollnagel and Woods.