Lead Scada Engineer - Ignition

Sandalwood Engineering & Ergonomics•Livonia, MI

About The Position

The Lead SCADA Engineer serves as a senior project contributor and emerging technical leader at Sandalwood, designing, developing, and deploying Ignition-based industrial software solutions. The role combines customer consulting and project leadership with application development, system architecture, infrastructure support, and technical guidance for other engineers. It is intended to build toward future senior technical leadership, with opportunities to gain experience in enterprise architecture, infrastructure administration, team mentoring, and strategic technology planning. The engineer works remotely and/or onsite with manufacturing customers to gather and validate requirements, lead technical discussions, translate needs into scalable designs, and contribute to project planning and proposals. The position also supports customer training and implementation, internal engineering standards, documentation, and knowledge sharing. Technical work includes developing Ignition Perspective and Vision applications, reusable frameworks, scripting libraries, SQL-driven applications, and integrations with industrial devices and enterprise systems. The role also supports OPC-UA connections, historians, alarms, reporting, data models, high availability and disaster recovery, and development infrastructure using virtualization, source control, and deployment pipelines.

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 technical problem-solving abilities and attention to detail.
Ability to work independently while managing multiple project priorities.
Excellent customer-facing communication and consulting skills.
Strong understanding of manufacturing operations and industrial automation systems.
Strong understanding of ISA-95, ISA-88, and industrial networking concepts.
Ability to mentor team members and contribute to engineering best practices.
Professionalism and accountability when leading customer projects.
Ability to become legally authorized to work in the United States; employment eligibility verification is required at hire. The employer does not offer H-1B visa sponsorship.

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 customer project requirements remotely and/or onsite.
Lead technical discussions with customer engineering, operations, maintenance, and IT teams.
Translate customer requirements into maintainable, scalable system designs.
Participate in project planning, estimating, and technical proposal development.
Serve as technical lead on assigned projects.
Provide technical guidance to junior engineers and developers; perform code and design reviews.
Contribute to internal documentation, engineering standards, and knowledge-sharing initiatives.
Deliver customer training and implementation support as needed.
Design scalable industrial software architectures and data models for manufacturing, operational, reporting, and analytics needs.
Support high-availability and disaster recovery strategies and participate in software design reviews and engineering-standard development.
Assist with 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, monitoring, and performance tuning.
Work with GitLab source control and software deployment pipelines.
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 functionality.
Perform system testing, troubleshooting, and commissioning activities.