Lead Scada Engineer - Ignition

Sandalwood Engineering & Ergonomics•Livonia, MI

About The Position

The Lead SCADA Engineer - Ignition is a senior project contributor and emerging technical leader who designs, develops, and deploys Ignition-based industrial software solutions. The role provides technical guidance on project architecture, customer engagement, system infrastructure, and development standards, while offering opportunities to grow into broader technical leadership responsibilities in enterprise architecture, infrastructure administration, team mentoring, and strategic technology planning. The engineer works remotely and/or onsite with customers as a consultant and trusted partner, gathering requirements and helping improve manufacturing operations. The position includes leading technical discussions, translating requirements into scalable designs, contributing to project planning and proposals, mentoring colleagues, and supporting customer training and implementation. The role also supports system architecture and infrastructure, including development environments, virtualization, server configuration, deployment, backups, monitoring, and performance tuning. Ignition work includes Perspective and Vision applications, reusable frameworks, SQL-driven applications, scripting, device and system integrations, historians, alarming, reporting, and integrations with enterprise systems.

Requirements

Four or more years of hands-on Ignition development experience.
Five or more years of industrial automation, SCADA, IIoT, or manufacturing systems experience.
Experience developing applications using Ignition Perspective and/or Vision.
Experience with Python/Jython scripting.
Strong SQL development and database experience.
Experience integrating PLCs and industrial devices using common industrial communication protocols.
Experience performing system testing, troubleshooting, and commissioning activities.
Experience working directly with manufacturing customers.
Strong understanding of manufacturing operations and industrial automation systems.
Strong understanding of ISA-95, ISA-88, and industrial networking concepts.
Strong technical problem-solving abilities and attention to detail.
Ability to work independently while managing multiple project priorities.
Excellent customer-facing communication and consulting skills.
Ability to mentor team members and contribute to engineering best practices.
Professionalism and accountability when leading customer projects.
Desire to learn system architecture, infrastructure management, and technical leadership responsibilities.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading technical portions of customer projects.
Experience designing enterprise-scale Ignition architectures.
Experience with Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL.
Experience with Git-based source control systems, preferably GitLab.
Experience supporting server infrastructure and virtualized environments.
Experience with Hyper-V and/or VMware administration.
Familiarity with industrial networking concepts and cybersecurity best practices.
Exposure to cloud-based technologies and modern software deployment practices.
Ignition Gold Certification or equivalent advanced certification.
Experience with MQTT architecture and Unified Namespace (UNS) implementations.
Practical experience applying ISA-95 and ISA-88 principles within manufacturing, MES, SCADA, or IIoT solutions.

Responsibilities

Gather, document, and validate project requirements with customers, remotely and/or onsite.
Lead technical discussions with customer engineering, operations, maintenance, and IT teams.
Translate customer requirements into maintainable and scalable system designs.
Participate in project planning, estimating, and technical proposal development.
Serve as a technical lead on assigned projects.
Provide technical guidance to junior engineers and developers.
Perform code reviews and design reviews.
Contribute to internal documentation, standards development, and knowledge-sharing initiatives.
Deliver customer training and implementation support as needed.
Design scalable industrial software architectures for manufacturing environments.
Develop data models for operational, reporting, and analytics requirements.
Support high-availability and disaster recovery strategies.
Participate in software design reviews and the establishment of engineering standards.
Assist in administration and maintenance of internal and customer development environments.
Support virtualized development and testing environments using Hyper-V and VMware.
Assist with server configuration, deployment, backup, system monitoring, and performance tuning.
Work with source control systems and software deployment pipelines using GitLab.
Help maintain and continuously improve development infrastructure and deployment processes.
Design, develop, and support industrial applications using Ignition Perspective and Vision.
Develop reusable application frameworks, scripting libraries, and development standards.
Create database-driven applications using SQL and Ignition scripting.
Configure OPC-UA connections, device integrations, historians, alarming systems, and reporting solutions.
Integrate Ignition with ERP, quality, maintenance, and other enterprise applications.
Develop and troubleshoot Python/Jython- and JavaScript-based functionality.