What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Automation Controls Engineer position at Blitzpanel?
What you’ll do
- Own creation of manufacturing automation and design of custom equipment of building panels.
- Jump in on hands-on shop work when needed (we’re a small team)
- Work with component vendors and purchasing department to specify and order components.
- Use I/O lists and controls layouts to develop schematics
- Own electrical design for custom control panels end-to-end
- Help standardize designs and create templates in our in-house design solution
- Improve quote accuracy of our custom solution(BOMs, wiring, labor assumptions)
- Comfortable with working in a lot of ambiguity
Technical requirements
- Understanding of NEC & IEC codes to create electrical designs
- Design and layout of control panels, keeping in mind panel fabrication process, component limitations such as wiring methods and heat distribution, and cable penetrations.
- Heavy experience in AutoCAD Electrical or EPLAN (at least one; open to learning the other)
- Has engineered and designed multiple UL508A control panels in the real world (motor starters, power distribution, etc.)
- Tech-savvy. Comfortable with modern tools automation. Has used AI tools (ChatGPT/Claude/etc.) to speed up work
Physical requirements
- Can lift 50 lbs
- Willing to do manual work sometimes (panel reviews, checking builds, shop support)
Education (flexible)
- BS in EE / ME / EET
- 4 Years experience
Bonus
- You’ve built personal projects (electronics, robotics, home automation, cars, etc.)
- You’ve worked with panel shops, integrators, or manufacturing teams
- You like creating reusable libraries, templates, standards, macros.
- Controls/automation exposure: PLCs, industrial networking, I/O, sensors, commissioning, troubleshooting (even basic)
- PLC programming (Allen-Bradley / Siemens / Codesys)
- Comfortable reading/writing simple IO lists and thinking through sensors, actuators, and interlocks
- Commissioning / troubleshooting exposure (debugging wiring issues, validating field signals, using a meter, chasing a problem to root cause)
Compensation: $130k - $200k/yr, 1%-3%
Salary : $130,000 - $200,000