Senior Automation Engineer

Upwork has partnered with one of its Enterprise level clients, a company that operates the world's most advanced indoor farm and is currently building the world's first vertical farm to grow strawberries indoors at scale. They also own the world's largest vertical farming research center.

They are currently looking for a Senior Automation Engineer to work onsite in their office in Compton, California.

As the Senior Automation Engineer, you will:

• Troubleshoot and resolve issues with large automated systems including: PLC, HMI devices, Pneumatics, Servo Motors, Vision Systems, Robotics and Manufacturing Execution Systems
• Support maintenance and troubleshoot mechanical, controls, and networking issues in relation to SCADA (preferably ignition)
• Investigate and troubleshoot manufacturing issues with a sense of urgency to prevent line down situations, and implement countermeasures to prevent repetitive breakdowns.
• Understand and contribute to software development lifecycle, including code analysis and system architecture comprehension (Machines-PLC-Software)
• Develop and maintain knowledge in database concepts, SQL, high-level or scripting languages, and cloud platforms like AWS
• Partner with the Software and Data Teams to understand and implement data collection and product traceability requirements and resolve issues on software deployments
• Interface automation equipment with internal software tools to aggregate machine data in a meaningful way
• Deliver projects successfully in a fast-paced, dynamic environment
• Travel up to 30% to support farm commissioning
•  Participate in an on call rotation

To be successful in this role, you need:

• Education or training equivalent to a B.S. or higher (e.g. M.S. or Ph.D) in an Engineering or other technical discipline and 5+ years of progressive experience implementing control systems
• Experience supporting implementation of control architectures from the ground up using an object-oriented approach
• Exposure to a wide variety of industrial control platforms -- we use Beckhoff & Rockwell
• You take pride in designing clear and easy to use user interfaces at the machine and line level (Ignition)
• Experience in software support and/or issue triage on processes that span across multiple technologies including proprietary software
• Expertise in troubleshooting electrical systems used in industrial automation
• A highly collaborative engineer, you partner closely with other stakeholders to develop system level requirements
• Experience with programming in high level or scripting languages and  working on cloud platforms such as AWS
• Exposure to or eagerness to learn about the following areas:
  • High and low voltage hardware design (480VAC - 24VDC)
  • Programming 6-axis robots, including vision and safety integration (FANUC, KUKA)
  • Database integration and administration (MySQL, Postgres)
  • Revision control and CI/CD tools (Git)
  • Software development using a variety of languages (Python, C#)
  • Machine vision for robotic guidance, metrology, or quality inspection
  • Defining equipment safety systems including networked safety (FSoE, CIP Safety, PROFIsafe)
  • Programming 6-Axis robots, including vision and safety integration (FANUC, KUKA, Denso)