Senior Controls Engineering Director

Insero Talent Solutions is recruiting a Senior Controls Engineering Director for a fast growing manufacturing company in Syracuse, NY.

SUMMARY AND PURPOSE

The Senior Controls Engineering Director provides strategic leadership, operational oversight, and technical governance for the entire controls and automation engineering department. This role transitions from executing individual projects to scaling engineering capabilities, standardizing global design practices, and aligning automation technologies with overarching business growth strategies.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Strategic Leadership & Governance

• Define global standards: Establish, enforce, and evolve company-wide controls engineering design standards and safety practices.
• Technology roadmap: Identify, lead development, and integrate emerging automation technologies, robotics advancements, and industry 4.0 trends.
• Operational excellence: Continuously refine engineering processes to maximize production velocity, reduce defects, and streamline costs.
• Budget ownership: Manage Research and Development, capital expenditure, and operational expenditure (R&D/CapEx/OpEx) budgets for the controls engineering department.

Departmental & Project Oversight

• Portfolio management: Monitor engineering execution across all simultaneous projects to guarantee scope, timeline, and margin compliance.
• Resource allocation: Optimize workforce planning, assigning engineering talent effectively across concurrent machine builds and R&D efforts.
• Escalation authority: Serve as the final technical arbiter for complex engineering challenges, field failures, and design deadlocks.
• Talent cultivation: Build engineering capabilities through structured mentorship, continuous education programs, and performance management.

Cross-Functional Integration & Commercial Support

• Sales enablement: Partner with Applications Engineering to review high-risk pricing models, concepts, and technical proposals.
• Manufacturing alignment: Streamline workflows between applications, design engineering, electrical assembly, shop-floor commissioning, and final factory acceptance.
• Executive collaboration: Align engineering capabilities with corporate business strategies, product management, and supply chain operations.
• Key account management: Act as the senior technical representative during high-stakes customer consultations and critical site escalations.

Field Operations & Travel

• Global commissioning strategy: Oversee the site-acceptance testing (SAT) framework to ensure flawless customer handovers.
• Strategic field deployment: Travel to customer sites, trade shows, or vendors (approx. 15-20%) for high-level executive reviews or critical system resolutions.
• Compliance maintenance: Maintain a valid passport and enhanced driver’s license for frictionless international travel.

PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

Education & Experience

• BS in electrical engineering, automation engineering, or equivalent technical field.
• 10 years of engineering experience within a design-build capital equipment manufacturing environment as a controls or electrical engineer.
• 5 years of direct people management experience leading multi-disciplinary engineering teams.
• Project management experience preferred.

Core Skills & Competencies

• Executive acumen: Proven track record scaling engineering departments, managing budgets, and executing corporate strategy.
• Project governance: Advanced understanding of Project Management Professional (PMP) principles or complex lifecycle management (PLM) systems.
• Technical mastery: Deep legacy knowledge of industrial automation architectures, advanced robot simulation, PLCs, HMIs, and SCADA systems.
• Experience with Rockwell Allen Bradley PLC and HMI platforms (Optix/Studio/ RSLogix5000, FactoryTalk View Studio) to program and control industrial machinery or processes.
• Experience with Fanuc robotics platform.
• Experience selecting and designing hardware to control and monitor industrial machinery and/or industrial processes.
• Experience with integration into WES, MES platforms a plus.
• Experience with integration into track and trace systems a plus.
• Experience with industrial vision programming (i.e. Cognex/Keyance) a plus.
• Relevant codes such as NFPA 79, NFPA 70, and CE a plus.
• Ability to interpret and to generate electrical and pneumatic schematics in ACADE or equivalent.
• Microsoft platform and relevant design and life cycle management software.