Sr. Staff Automation Projects Engineer

Key Responsibilities

• Independently lead and execute high-stakes, multi-million dollar automation initiatives from initial concept through to stable 24/7 production release.
• Ensure all concurrent project lines meet rigorous high-level KPIs across Safety, Quality, Timing, and Cost.
• Drive program-level KPI planning, manage capital expenditure (CapEx) budgets, and handle strategic resource allocation to ensure optimal ROI on automated infrastructure.
• Drive a culture of world-class engineering excellence across the organization. Conduct critical design reviews, shape technical hiring strategies, and actively coach and grow the skills of junior and mid-level engineers.
• Act as a primary technical and commercial authority interfacing with 3rd-party automation integrators, global equipment manufacturers, and machinery OEMs. Define highly complex Statements of Work, manage critical milestones, and mitigate high-level vendor risk.
• Support the implementation of automation standards and frameworks across the company. Ensure complete interoperability and data continuity between custom physical machinery, industrial robotics networks, and enterprise "digital threads" (MES, PLM, ERP) to optimize Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).
• Work closely within the company with all stakeholders, translating complex engineering and project data into clear automation projects and goals. Deliver those projects to the factory operations teams.
• Ensure technical lessons learned from all completed automation deployments are systematically captured and incorporated into future project architectures, continuously elevating internal engineering standards.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive engineering and technical project leadership experience within high-volume, advanced manufacturing, systems integration, or industrial automation environments.
• A proven track record of successfully executing large-scale capital engineering programs, managing multi-hundred-thousand to multi-million dollar budgets, and fundamentally altering factory unit economics.
• Deep foundational expertise in the lifecycle deployment of industrial robotics, PLC-based control architectures, automated material handling, and custom machinery, with the ability to serve as an escalation point for complex technical challenges.
• Exceptional communication and negotiation skills with a proven ability to interface with management-level internal teams (Quality, Operations, Maintenance, Supply Chain) and present project status up and down the reporting structure.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience driving highly automated "lights-out" manufacturing initiatives specifically targeting complex post-processing workflows for metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) systems.
• Practical, advanced understanding of manufacturability, reliability, and maintainability (DfM/DfR) inside a centralized, high-precision factory framework.