Staff Controls & Automation Engineer
Skills
About the Role
You will design, build, and own the controls architecture for pilot, demonstration, and commercial plants. You will develop PLC and safety-PLC logic, implement state-based and advanced controls, create soft sensors and diagnostics, support commissioning, and collaborate on simulation, analysis, version control, documentation, and change-management practices.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree with 10+ years of experience designing and owning automation systems for continuous chemical or energy processes
- Strong foundation in control theory, process dynamics, multivariable interactions, and constraint management
- Practical experience with state estimation and inferential sensing
- Hands-on deployment of model predictive control or other model-based controllers on real industrial systems
- Expertise with PLC platforms and SCADA/HMI systems
- Deep experience with interlocks, permissives, safety logic, shutdowns, and high-temperature, high-pressure, and flammable-gas systems
- Experience with thermochemical systems, especially catalytic systems
- Experience integrating advanced control with DCS platforms
- Familiarity with Python or similar tools for prototyping estimation and control algorithms
- Experience in FOAK hardware or fast-moving industrial startup environments
Responsibilities
- Architect the full control stack for pilot, demonstration, and commercial plants
- Define the hierarchy linking base, supervisory, and advanced control
- Develop modular control logic in PLCs and safety PLCs
- Own interlocks, permissives, fail-safe behavior, alarm logic, and safety instrumented functions
- Implement state-based control and state estimators
- Build soft sensors, diagnostics, and anomaly and fault detection
- Validate and tune advanced controllers through simulation, staged deployment, and field commissioning
- Identify and implement model predictive control or other model-based controllers
- Develop simulation or digital-twin models for new control strategies
- Collaborate with process, mechanical, electrical, and operations teams
- Support commissioning, plant bring-up, troubleshooting, and continuous optimization
- Drive version control, documentation, and management-of-change practices
Benefits
- Equity compensation
- Generous paid time off
- Health insurance with 100% of healthcare, vision, and dental premiums covered
- 401(k) with company match