Position overview
Senior Controls Engineers at Custom Automation take ownership of technically difficult and often incomplete scopes. They turn ambiguous equipment or production problems into a workable controls plan, make sound architecture and implementation decisions, and remain hands-on through FAT, site startup, stabilization, and handoff. This role combines technical leadership with direct programming, troubleshooting, and customer interaction.
What you will lead and deliver
- Lead discovery, functional definition, controls architecture, system-interface planning, and execution strategy for new equipment, retrofits, and production improvements.
- Develop and troubleshoot complex PLC, HMI, SCADA, robotics, and vision applications while serving as the escalation point for difficult network, motion, safety, and process issues.
- Lead FAT, SAT, commissioning, and production ramp-up activities, including punch-list control, tested software baselines, acceptance evidence, and final handoff.
- Review controls code, alarms, diagnostics, recovery behavior, standards, and maintainability; provide specific technical direction to engineers and integration partners.
- Coordinate decisions directly with customers, OEMs, integrators, machine builders, operations, and maintenance while communicating technical risk, scope changes, and priorities early.
- Develop practical upgrade paths for aging controls and robotics platforms, including phased migrations that respect production constraints.
- Guide and mentor other engineers while remaining personally involved in programming, checkout, and field troubleshooting.
Core qualifications
- Typically eight or more years of hands-on industrial controls or automation experience, or an equivalent record of leading complex systems through startup.
- Deep Rockwell Automation experience and strong programming and commissioning capability on at least one major industrial robot platform.
- System-level understanding of industrial networks, motion and drive systems, safety circuits, machine interfaces, and production-process behavior.
- Demonstrated ability to establish an architecture, make defensible technical decisions, and diagnose unfamiliar equipment under schedule pressure.
- Strong written and verbal communication with the judgment to explain tradeoffs clearly to customers, engineers, operators, and maintenance teams.
- Disciplined change control, documentation, backup management, and customer-site safety practices.
- Bachelor’s degree in electrical, controls, automation, mechatronics, computer engineering, or comparable technical education and practical experience.
Experience that stands out
- Multi-platform robot expertise, including FANUC KAREL, ABB RAPID, KUKA KRL, or comparable advanced robot programming.
- Material handling, sorting, palletizing, depalletizing, case packing, machine tending, electronic-component assembly, or welding automation.
- Vision-guided robotics, conveyor tracking, 3D picking, coordinated motion, and cycle-rate optimization.
- Ignition, Wonderware, FactoryTalk, custom VB, C++, or C# applications, and WMS or plant-system integration.
- Digital-twin and rate simulation using ROBOGUIDE, RobotStudio, industry-standard tools, custom Unity environments, or automated site-code generation.
- Controls reviews, legacy modernization, safety risk-assessment support, process improvement, or Lean Six Sigma work.
Interested in the role?
Tell us about the systems you have led, the technical decisions you personally made, and the commissioning or recovery work you carried through. A resume or LinkedIn profile is enough to begin; do not submit confidential customer material.