Sr. Engineer, Controls and Automation (Electrical)

About the role

The Sr. Engineer, Controls and Automation provides senior‑level plant engineering leadership for electrical power, controls, automation, operational technology (OT), SCADA, and equipment‑reliability needs in a continuous manufacturing environment. The role partners daily with Engineering, Maintenance, Production, HSE, Quality, Information Technology, corporate digital resources, vendors, and contractors to safely troubleshoot chronic failures; design and execute upgrades; establish and support secure, maintainable OT network infrastructure; implement and sustain the plant SCADA platform; improve equipment availability; and ensure electrical, controls, and OT systems are documented, recoverable, and aligned with company standards. The position combines hands‑on field support with disciplined engineering analysis, network and control‑system architecture, project execution, commissioning, cybersecurity coordination, and technical stewardship of production assets and facility systems.

Electrical, Controls, and Automation Engineering

• Design, specify, modify, and support industrial electrical and control systems, including power distribution, motor‑control equipment, PLCs, HMIs, variable‑frequency and DC drives, instrumentation, sensors, industrial networks, and machine‑safety interfaces.
• Develop control narratives, functional requirements, I/O lists, panel layouts, schematics, network architecture, bills of material, and installation work packages.
• Program, configure, troubleshoot, and improve Allen‑Bradley, Mitsubishi, and Siemens PLC/HMI platforms and associated drive systems.
• Support legacy systems while developing migration and obsolescence plans.
• Perform disciplined diagnostics using drawings, PLC logic, trend data, drive fault history, network diagnostics, and field measurements while preserving rollback capability.
• Maintain validated backups of PLC, HMI, drive, SCADA, server, and network‑device configurations and control access and changes.

OT Network Infrastructure and SCADA

• Serve as the plant engineering lead and long‑term technical owner for OT infrastructure supporting the SCADA system, coordinating governance, security, remote access, server, identity, and enterprise connectivity requirements with IT and corporate resources.
• Develop and maintain logical and physical OT network architecture, managed industrial switches, fiber and copper backbone requirements, network cabinets, UPS needs, addressing conventions, VLAN and segmentation requirements, and resilient communications paths.
• Lead or support design, configuration, testing, commissioning, and expansion of the Ignition SCADA platform, including gateways, clients, PLC connectivity, tags, alarms, trends, dashboards, historian functions, time synchronization, and approved system interfaces.
• Establish and maintain an OT asset inventory and device/IP register covering PLCs, HMIs, drives, instruments, switches, gateways, servers, workstations, and other connected production assets.
• Configure and troubleshoot industrial communications (e.g., Ethernet/IP and other plant protocols) and isolate addressing, port, cabling, switch, bandwidth, duplicate‑device, time‑synchronization, and communications faults.
• Coordinate IT/OT boundary requirements, including approved architecture, segmentation, firewall rules, secure vendor access, accounts, patch and firmware planning, endpoint protection, logging, monitoring, and incident response.
• Develop backup, restore, disaster‑recovery, and configuration‑management practices for SCADA and OT assets and periodically verify recoverability.
• Plan cutovers and migrations with documented prerequisites, tests, communications, rollback points, production contingencies, post‑startup monitoring, and turnover documentation.
• Develop OT and SCADA standards for naming, addressing, switch configuration, network drawings, cabinet design, remote connectivity, alarms, historian tags, programming changes, and future expansion.
• Partner with cybersecurity and IT resources to assess vulnerabilities and operational risk without compromising process safety, availability, vendor support, or validated functionality.

Reliability and Maintenance Support

• Partner with electricians, mechanics, planners, and production personnel to troubleshoot breakdowns, analyze failures, and restore equipment safely and efficiently.
• Lead or support root‑cause investigations for recurring electrical, controls, communications, network, and process‑equipment failures and verify corrective‑action effectiveness.
• Improve preventive and predictive maintenance tasks for electrical assets, controls hardware, motors, drives, panels, field devices, SCADA components, servers, and network infrastructure.
• Review CMMS history, downtime data, alarms, work orders, historian trends, network events, and spare‑parts usage to identify reliability opportunities.
• Develop critical‑spare recommendations and lifecycle plans for obsolete or unsupported electrical, controls, SCADA, and OT equipment.
• Provide technical escalation support during significant equipment events and support planned shutdown, weekend, or on‑call needs.

Projects, Installation, and Commissioning

• Develop project scopes, alternatives, estimates, schedules, risk assessments, and technical justifications for capital and expense projects.
• Lead or support upgrades from concept through startup, including design reviews, procurement, acceptance testing, commissioning, punch‑list closure, and turnover.
• Coordinate multidisciplinary work involving mechanical systems, process requirements, electrical installation, controls integration, OT networking, SCADA, utilities, cybersecurity, and production constraints.
• Ensure projects include guarding, interlocks, alarms, maintainability, safe access, energy isolation, network and cybersecurity requirements, and required documentation.
• Monitor project cost and schedule and review technical quotations, purchase requisitions, change orders, invoices, and contractor deliverables.
• Plan cutovers and startups with prerequisites, contingencies, backups, rollback points, communications, and post‑startup monitoring.

Safety, Risk, and Compliance

• Integrate safety through hazard review, risk assessment, management of change, pre‑startup review, safe‑work planning, and safeguard verification.
• Follow and reinforce lockout/tagout, electrical safe‑work practices, arc‑flash requirements, energized‑work restrictions, PPE requirements, and machine‑startup procedures.
• Immediately escalate conditions affecting safety functions, interlocks, protective devices, environmental controls, process control, SCADA visibility, or OT security.
• Do not leave undocumented bypasses, temporary addressing, unmanaged switches, or temporary network equipment in service.
• Support incident investigations, cause mapping, corrective actions, audits, cybersecurity response activities, and closure of findings.
• Ensure contractor and integrator work is properly scoped, authorized, coordinated, monitored, documented, and completed to site standards.

Documentation, Standards, and Team Capability

• Create and maintain electrical drawings, loop diagrams, OT physical and logical network drawings, device/IP registers, asset inventories, revision records, equipment files, and as‑built documentation.
• Apply document control so field systems, drawings, code, configurations, network records, and backup repositories remain aligned.
• Develop troubleshooting guides, procedures, standards, job plans, recovery instructions, and training materials.
• Coach technicians in systematic troubleshooting, PLC/HMI navigation, drive diagnostics, electrical drawings, SCADA navigation, basic industrial‑network diagnostics, controls documentation, and safe work practices.
• Communicate technical and cybersecurity risks, options, recommendations, and project status clearly to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Participate in reliability, capital‑planning, manufacturing‑systems, SCADA, and OT roadmap activities.
• Other duties as assigned by department manager.

Qualifications

Education: Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (or Electrical Engineering Technology, Controls Engineering, Automation Engineering, or a closely related field) from an accredited institution.

Experience:

• Seven years of experience in a manufacturing environment, with at least five years of progressively responsible electrical, controls, automation, OT, SCADA, or plant‑engineering experience.
• Demonstrated experience troubleshooting industrial electrical and controls systems and supporting equipment installation, modification, and commissioning.
• Hands‑on experience supporting industrial Ethernet networks, managed switches, connected PLC/HMI systems, and SCADA infrastructure in an operating manufacturing environment.
• Experience leading complex technical projects, coordinating cross‑functional stakeholders, and providing technical direction to technicians, contractors, or system integrators.

Knowledge & Skills:

• Industrial electrical fundamentals, power distribution, motors, motor controls, instrumentation, control panels, and electrical schematics.
• Proficient programming and troubleshooting of Allen‑Bradley ControlLogix, CompactLogix, MicroLogix, Studio 5000/RSLogix, and PanelView/FactoryTalk or RSView environments.
• Working knowledge of Mitsubishi and Siemens PLC platforms and industrial drive systems.
• Industrial network architecture and communications (Ethernet/IP, managed switches, VLANs, segmentation, IP addressing/subnetting, fiber and copper media, commissioning, diagnostics).
• Understanding of SCADA architecture, PLC‑to‑SCADA communications, alarms, trends, historians, time synchronization, tag structures, backups, and commissioning.
• Foundational OT cybersecurity practices: least privilege, secure remote access, asset inventory, configuration control, recovery, patch/firmware risk planning, and change management.
• AutoCAD or comparable drafting software; ability to maintain field‑usable electrical and network drawings.
• Root‑cause analysis, structured troubleshooting, risk assessment, management of change, disciplined documentation, project leadership, and effective cross‑functional communication.
• Excellent communication and mathematical skills; ability to use common hand and power tools.
• Proficiency with Allen‑Bradley ControlLogix PLCs, Allen‑Bradley PanelView Plus/Studio HMIs, Parker and AB AC drives, and AutoCAD.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience implementing or administering Ignition SCADA, including gateway configuration, tag integration, alarms, historian functions, visualization, and deployment support.
• Experience with SQL/data integration, OPC UA, manufacturing information systems, or approved interfaces between OT and enterprise systems.