What are the responsibilities and job description for the Manufacturing Innovation Advanced Technology Engineer position at CTC USA, LLC?
Job Title: Manufacturing Innovation Advanced Technology Engineer-1507474
Location: Georgetown, KY
Job Type: Contract
Location: Georgetown, KY
Job Type: Contract
Position Summary:
Who we’re looking for
Toyota’s Manufacturing Project Innovation Center (Manufacturing Innovation) – Advanced Technology Department is looking for a passionate and highly motivated Advanced Technology Engineer
The primary responsibility of this role is:
- Model Development & Training Speed
- Design and implement computer vision models for defect detection, segmentation, and classification.
- Accelerate training cycles using synthetic data, active learning, and domain randomization to cover rare defects and specification variance.
- Production Deployment
- Package models and services using Docker and manage deployments through Kubernetes or equivalent orchestration tools.
- Implement version control, rollback strategies, and observability for latency, drift, and false-positive/false-negative metrics.
- Edge Optimization
- Optimize inference for edge and embedded hardware (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson, Intel accelerators) to meet strict real-time latency requirements for moving-line inspection.
- Ensure consistent performance under varying lighting, optics, and surface conditions.
- Integration with Manufacturing Systems
- Integrate vision systems with PLCs, encoders, triggers, and industrial networks using OPC-UA, MQTT, and REST protocols.
- Align deployments with Toyota’s ICS , GALC, and TVIP architecture standards for plant-level connectivity and reliability.
- Data Strategy & Quality Control
- Lead data collection campaigns, manage annotation workflows, and establish quality gates for model validation.
- Utilize synthetic data pipelines and augmentation techniques to improve model robustness and reduce training time.
- Reliability & Sustainment
- Ensure uptime and availability targets are met through proactive monitoring, calibration (MSA), and backup/restore processes.
- Implement drift detection, audit false-out risks, and perform root cause analysis for inspection failures.
Reporting to the Manufacturing Innovation Manager, the person in this role will support the Production Engineering Division and SOAR Group’s objective to improve manufacturing competitiveness.
What you’ll be doing
- Develop and deploy production-grade machine learning models for industrial vision inspection systems across Toyota manufacturing lines.
- Accelerating model development and training using advanced techniques such as synthetic data generation, ensuring high accuracy and generalization, and delivering containerized software optimized for edge hardware
- Development of new technologies for PE and Manufacturing competitiveness improvement
- Lead and manage projects from concept to launch for new technology first introduction to manufacturing including creating schedules, establishing punch lists, and meeting established due dates and milestones.
- Search for innovative solutions, test them in a manufacturing setting, and develop business case justification to gain approval to purchase if trials prove successful.
- Close collaboration between both internal and external groups across Toyota including North American Manufacturing Centers ( NAMCs), Toyota Motor Corp (TMC), Toyota Technical Center (TTC) , PE support shops, IT ( One Tech) teams, automation teams & Plano divisions, to ensure quality and to integrate robust AI solutions into high-volume manufacturing environments.
What you bring
- Ability to travel to all North American Manufacturing Centers (NAMC’s)-- including Canada and Mexico; and to Toyota Motor Corp (TMC)-- Japan
- Experience with project management including writing detailed scope of work, creating schedules, managing vendors/contractors, and providing regular status updates (Y/N – text follow up)
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology or related field.
- 5 years of experience in industrial machine vision and edge AI deployment.
- Proficiency in Python and C with strong knowledge of ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow).
- Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes).
- Familiarity with ONNX Runtime, TensorRT, and optimization for embedded hardware.
- Experience integrating vision systems with PLCs and industrial protocols (OPC-UA, MQTT).
- Experience managing the full model lifecycle: data collection, labeling, validation, rollout, monitoring, and retraining
- Experience in areas such as object detection, classification, segmentation and familiarity with mainstream object detection and semantic/instance segmentation models.
- Familiarity with industrial cameras, lighting, and optics, including trigger-based image capture
Experience balancing inspection accuracy with false positives vs flow-out risk in quality
Desired / Preferred
- Master’s Degree in Engineering or Advanced Degree in related fields
- Academic research experience in new technology
- Project management work involving internal and external parties – 6 months or greater
- Experience deploying equipment including establishing RJ, PFMEA, and quality control plan
- Experience deploying automotive production equipment
- Experience in Robotics to include operation, teaching, maintenance, and safety
- Expertise in synthetic data generation techniques (GANs, VAEs, NeRFs, Blender) and domain randomization for model generalization.
- Experience with high-speed inline inspection systems and vision-based process control.
- Knowledge of IIoT data pipelines and messaging standards.
- Strong understanding of calibration, measurement system analysis (MSA), and quality-critical inspection requirements.
Must Have:
- Vision & Technology project.
- An ideal candidate should be experienced with machine learning and vision systems using PLC.
- 5 years of experience in Machine Vision & Edge AI development.
- Proficiency in Python and C