Commercial deployment of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASSs) is close to becoming a reality. Although MASSs are fully autonomous, the industry will still allow remote operations centre (ROC) operators to intervene if a MASS is facing an emergency the MASS cannot handle by itself. A human-centred design for the associated emergency response systems will require attention to the ROC operator workplace, but also, arguably, to the behaviour-shaping constraints on the engineers building these systems. There is thus a need for an engineer-centred design of engineering organisations, influenced by the current discourse on human factors. To contribute to the discourse, think-aloud protocol interviewing was conducted with well-informed maritime operators to elicit fundamental demands on cognition and collaboration by maritime autonomy emergency response systems. Based on the results, inferences were made regarding both design factors and methodological choices for future, early phase engineering of emergency response systems. Firstly, engineering firms have to improve their informal gathering and sharing of information through gatekeepers and/or organisational liaisons. To avoid a too cautious approach to accountability, this will have to include a closer integration of development and operations. Secondly, associated studies taking the typical approach of exposing relevant operators to new design concepts in scripted scenarios should include significant flexibility and less focus on realism.