IoT Engineer

Ashley Furniture Industries•Advance, NC

About The Position

Ashley Furniture Industries is the world's largest manufacturer of furniture, serving customers in more than 123 countries. As we continue investing in automation, AI, robotics, and digital manufacturing, we're transforming our production facilities into next-generation Smart Factories. We're looking for an IoT Engineer who wants to solve complex engineering challenges at scale and help shape the future of manufacturing. This isn't a maintenance role—it's an opportunity to design and build the connected manufacturing ecosystem that powers one of the world's largest manufacturing operations. You'll work at the intersection of Industrial IoT, automation, robotics, cloud connectivity, and enterprise systems, creating the architecture that connects factory-floor equipment with the business systems that drive production. From integrating PLCs and robotics to building edge-to-cloud data pipelines and enabling digital twins, your work will directly improve production visibility, operational efficiency, quality, and scalability across multiple manufacturing facilities. If you're passionate about solving real-world engineering problems, modernizing manufacturing through Industry 4.0 technologies, and seeing your work deployed across multiple plants, we'd love to talk.

Requirements

Industrial IoT or Industry 4.0 implementations
PLC integration and industrial automation
MQTT, OPC-UA, REST APIs, or industrial communication protocols
MES, ERP, or enterprise manufacturing systems
Edge computing and real-time data pipelines
RFID, barcode, serialization, or computer vision technologies
Robotics, automated packaging, or manufacturing equipment
Multi-site deployment experience
Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) and Site Acceptance Testing (SAT)
Graph databases or manufacturing genealogy platforms such as Neo4j
Think like a systems engineer and enjoy solving complex integration problems
Stay calm under production pressure and thrive in fast-paced environments
Communicate effectively with software engineers, controls engineers, vendors, and manufacturing teams
Take ownership from design through deployment
Enjoy standardizing solutions that can scale across an enterprise
Have a passion for continuous improvement and operational excellence

Responsibilities

Architect and implement Industrial IoT integrations connecting PLCs, robotics, sensors, machine controllers, and production equipment
Build secure edge-to-cloud data pipelines using technologies including MQTT, OPC-UA, REST APIs, and modern messaging protocols
Develop standardized connectivity frameworks that can be deployed across multiple manufacturing facilities
Create scalable data models for production, quality, downtime, and machine telemetry
Design reusable integration patterns that accelerate future Smart Factory deployments
Connect manufacturing equipment with enterprise platforms including MES, ERP, and our Execution Operations Platform (EOP)
Implement material traceability solutions using RFID, barcode, serialization, and machine vision technologies
Enable real-time production visibility through Control Tower and plant observability platforms
Support digital twin initiatives that improve operational insight and decision making
Build event-driven data architectures that power analytics, reporting, and AI initiatives
Partner with controls engineers, automation vendors, and plant operations teams during equipment installations and production launches
Participate in Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) and Site Acceptance Testing (SAT)
Troubleshoot machine communications and integration challenges during commissioning and live production
Scale successful implementations across multiple manufacturing locations
Monitor connectivity, system health, and data quality across manufacturing sites
Diagnose and resolve communication failures impacting production
Improve resiliency, fault tolerance, and overall platform reliability
Continuously optimize Industrial IoT architecture to reduce downtime and improve operational efficiency