Controls / Automation Engineer

Position Title: Controls / Automation Engineer

Reports To: Engineering Manager

Location: Office / off site, as required

Employee Type: Full-time employee

Supervises Others: Commensurate with experience

Required Education: Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering or similar

Required Experience: 5+ years of related experience

Required Travel: <10%

Company Summary:

M.E.A. Inc. is a global leader in the design and manufacture of electrohydraulic actuators and controls that drive critical industrial valves in the refining, mining, pipeline, power and other industries. Our products provide our industrial customers with unmatched reliability, safety, and performance in a wide range of applications. We are a close-knit, family-owned company, and we seek a talented, detail-oriented, and motivated individual to join our team for the long term.

Position Summary:

The Controls Engineer is responsible for the design, engineering, and documentation required to produce, test and deliver control systems for MEA’s electrohydraulic actuation projects, per the specification. This role will manage the electrical and control aspects of projects assigned by the Engineering Manager. This role requires interaction with electrical and control engineers, mechanical engineers, and related technicians both inside and outside the company. This role may require supervision and assignment of tasks to mechanical and/or electrical designers as required. This position may be the primary point of contact with the customer, or with the customer’s departmental leaders, depending on the project.

Responsibilities:

• PLC programming of MEA’s actuation products from inception through production.
• Responsible for electrical schematics, component research and selection, and design layout of control panels, control enclosures, and related systems to support project objectives.
• Perform electrical engineering calculations, including component and system power consumption.
• Interact with customer and MEA management to develop project scope, deliverables, timelines and milestones based on customer requirements and specifications.
• Creation of electrical schematics, component layout drawings and BOMs.
• Develop test procedures for proofing new programs and revisions to existing ones.
• Review all customer documentation / drawing mark-ups upon return to MEA and distribute as required internally.
• Creation of ECRs and resolution of NCRs as required.
• Elevate customer change requests and scope of work changes as required to the Engineering Manager and Sales.
• Support the company’s Sales department with proposal review and new product development, including listing any exceptions to customer RFQs.
• Create system specification documents according to MEA proposals to customers.
• Chair meetings such as engineering reviews, both internal and with the customer as required.
• Maintain internal MEA project and job documentation.
• Trouble shoot and de-bug system controls as necessary during production and internal factory acceptance testing.
• Travel as required to support new installations at industrial facilities and the company’s Field Service team.

Roles and Relationships:

• Demonstrated ability to interact and cooperate with MEA colleagues and customer employees at all levels.
• Modify current drive and PLC programs as required for product improvements.
• Value others, communicate effectively, drive execution, foster innovation, solve problems creatively, think beyond “that’s how we’ve always done it”.
• Demonstrate high integrity and professionalism while developing internal and external relationships.
• Potentially supervise and mentor designers in creation of electrical schematics, component layout drawings and BOMs.

Qualifications / Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree in electrical engineering, plus minimum 5 years related work experience.
• Experience with PLC programming; Allen Bradley, Schneider, Siemens, and Wago preferred.
• Understand the interaction of mechanical and electrical systems in closed loop actuation design.
• Experience with AutoCAD and Solidworks preferred.
• Fluent in English, written and spoken.
• Good organizational and time management skills.
• Adaptable to changing priorities and deadlines.
• Ability to work under time pressure, and multitask.
• Ability to be self-motivated and work independently for long periods of time.
• Strong problem solving skills; ability to make quick and sound decisions.
• Ability and willingness to do hands on assembly and testing of prototypes.
• Have a valid US drivers license; have a US passport or be willing and able to obtain one.

Desired Experience/Skills:

• Design work related to petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants, oil and gas pipelines, power generation facilities, mining installations.
• Design/engineering work pertaining to plant DCS systems e.g. Emerson DeltaV, Schneider Foxboro, etc.
• Familiarity with NEC Class 1 Division 2, NEC Class 1 Division 1, ATEX Zone 2, ATEX Zone 1, and other hazardous locations standards and area ratings.
• ATEX design methods in hazardous atmospheres (e.g. Ex d, Ex p, Ex i, etc.).
• Experience with servodrives and programming in object oriented programming language.
• Schneider Control Expert and similar controls engineering platforms.
• Experience with hydraulic based actuation systems.

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

• Ability to operate and interact with a computer for long periods of time (up to 8 hours).
• Ability to sit for long periods (up to 8 hours) with limited breaks in order to meet job requirement.
• Ability to respond to emails and requests for specific tasks.
• Ability to stand for short periods and perform tasks utilizing hand tools in order to assist with production support as required.
• On rare occasion, ability to stand and calibrate/troubleshoot our control equipment for medium-duration periods at customer facilities (such as oil refineries, copper mines, pipeline installations, power plants etc.), in a range of environmental conditions.

Pay: From $95,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• 401(k)
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance

Work Location: In person