What are the responsibilities and job description for the Sr Controls Engineer position at Planet Pharma?
Top 3 technical skills that are required for the role:
Years’ Experience Required: 3-5
Will the contractor be working 40 hours a week? If not, weekly estimate? 40
Does this position require the candidate to be onsite or remote, if hybrid what does the onsite vs remote schedule look like? onsite
What is your timeline for scheduling interviews? ASAP
What product line will this person support? Boulder production broadly, primarily LigaSure product lines.
This role will support manufacturing data integration and reporting within a clean-room medical device manufacturing environment. The role is focused on connecting PLC and non-PLC based production equipment to the Ignition server and underlying databases to enable reliable collection of machine and process data. This work will support site-wide OEE, equipment performance, and operational dashboards used to improve visibility, decision-making, and manufacturing performance. The person in this role will also help support Power BI dashboard development and maintenance to ensure accurate, automated, and actionable reporting across the site.
Day-to-day responsibilities
A Day in the Life
The Sr Controls Engineer is a member of cross functional teams combining the skills of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Information Technology, and Operations. This position will support the design, development and validation of architectures that support the transmission of digital information that is used for the advancement of Smart Digital Factory initiatives within the company. These activities will contribute to best-in-class quality, efficiency, testability, and serviceability for Surgical Devices products.
Responsibilities Include
- Industrial automation integration - Strong experience connecting PLC-based manufacturing equipment, especially Rockwell/Allen-Bradley systems, to SCADA/MES/data platforms such as Ignition. This should include PLC communications, tag structures, OPC UA, industrial networking, and real-time data acquisition.
- Ignition platform and manufacturing data systems - Hands-on expertise with Ignition for device connectivity, tag management, database integration, scripting, and dashboard/data pipeline development. Experience enabling site-wide manufacturing visibility, including OEE and equipment performance reporting, would be important.
- Data visualization and reporting - Advanced capability in Power BI and SQL/database-connected reporting, including building, publishing, and maintaining automated dashboards that refresh from manufacturing data sources such as Ignition. Ability to model operational data for actionable KPIs is key.
Years’ Experience Required: 3-5
Will the contractor be working 40 hours a week? If not, weekly estimate? 40
Does this position require the candidate to be onsite or remote, if hybrid what does the onsite vs remote schedule look like? onsite
What is your timeline for scheduling interviews? ASAP
What product line will this person support? Boulder production broadly, primarily LigaSure product lines.
This role will support manufacturing data integration and reporting within a clean-room medical device manufacturing environment. The role is focused on connecting PLC and non-PLC based production equipment to the Ignition server and underlying databases to enable reliable collection of machine and process data. This work will support site-wide OEE, equipment performance, and operational dashboards used to improve visibility, decision-making, and manufacturing performance. The person in this role will also help support Power BI dashboard development and maintenance to ensure accurate, automated, and actionable reporting across the site.
Day-to-day responsibilities
- Connect PLC/Rockwell-based and other production equipment within a clean-room medical device manufacturing environment to the Ignition platform and related databases
- Troubleshoot communication, connectivity, and data flow issues between manufacturing equipment, Ignition, and reporting tools
- Configure, validate, and maintain tags, data points, and data structures used for operational reporting and analytics
- Support development and enhancement of site-wide OEE, equipment performance, and manufacturing dashboards
- Assist with Power BI reports that pull data from Ignition and related rces, including publishing, maintenance, and scheduled refresh
- Partner with engineering, operations, and other stakeholders to translate manufacturing data and reporting needs into practical dashboard solutions
- Help ensure production data is accurate, consistent, and accessible to support performance monitoring and continuous improvement in a regulated manufacturing setting
A Day in the Life
The Sr Controls Engineer is a member of cross functional teams combining the skills of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Information Technology, and Operations. This position will support the design, development and validation of architectures that support the transmission of digital information that is used for the advancement of Smart Digital Factory initiatives within the company. These activities will contribute to best-in-class quality, efficiency, testability, and serviceability for Surgical Devices products.
Responsibilities Include
- First priority is to work as a team member responsible for the modification of existing Allen-Bradley PLC-based manufacturing test equipment to support data integration with the Ignition platform.
- Work as a team member responsible for the design and implementation of data communication architectures within an Industry 4.0 environment.
- Work as a team member following best practices for the validation and verification of Non-Product Software (NPS).
- Be a contributing software development engineer in the creation of systems for the purposes of data transmission, storage, and visualization.
- Help in the definition and creation of techniques for the testing of performance and quality in data transmission architectures.
- Contribute to code and design reviews of NPS.
- Develop and execute engineering verification and validation protocols for software-controlled systems.
- Stay abreast of advances in latest technologies related to SCADA systems and streaming data architectures.
- Any other duties and responsibilities as assigned.
- Expertise in Allen-Bradley PLC software development
- Experience with the Ignition platform from Industrial Automation
- Demonstrated ability in the design, development and verification of software systems
- Demonstrated ability to work in cross functional teams
- Demonstrated ability to work with embedded systems
- Strong interpersonal skills
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Strong attention to detail
- Demonstrated ability to use all Microsoft Office tools, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Visio
- Medical Device experience, QSR experience, and familiarity with change control processes in a regulated environment
- Experience with the concepts of “Digital Factory,” “IIoT,” and “Industry 4.0”
- Experience with the Validation of software in a regulated industry
- Experience with the DeviceWISE platform from Tellit
- Experience with the MQTT protocol
- Experience with Python programming
- Experience with PLC programming and the OPC-UA protocol
- Experience with the test and validation of visual display interfaces
- Experience with version control systems
- Experience with HiveMQ
- SQL experience
- Demonstrated experience with application of principles of Statistical Process Control (SPC) and/or Operational Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).