Featured Careers

How’s this for career leverage? An international design / build engineering and automation firm only now starts to position its U.S. Headquarters (in Florida!)

A list of Fortune 100 Companies already loves them. Work visas are expiring. And they need their FIRST full-time permanent U.S. Automation Engineer now, as they begin building their U.S. Team. They’re currently busy in five markets across the U.S. and expanding.

If you were the first U.S. employee on board, how far do you think you could run with this one?

Some say Director level in two years. Wow.

Please. Don’t just “apply.” Read this ENTIRE story, so you totally understand what’s happening. This is a solid opportunity, it’s fast, and I need you to write me something useful – quickly – so we can make sense for an employer who needs to move immediately.  (IMMEDIATELY)

You and I will talk. We just have to be efficient. Thanks, and please read on…

Requirements

Let’s get the basics out of the way.

The purpose of the position is to help the company…
• Impress its existing wonderful customers
• Develop even more new business, and
• Help open and grow the new Florida offices.

This is a Senior Automation Engineer position, so you’ve got to be excellent at…
• Design
• PLC Programming, and
• Delivering Automation Projects.

Technical Requirements are…

• Wonderware

– InTouch 10.0
⁃ Wonderware System Platform (IAS) would be great.
⁃ Certified? Tell me!
• Allen Bradley, Rockwell
⁃ RSLogix 5000

Project Functions
• Implement…
⁃ FDS – Functional Design Specification
⁃ FAT – Factory Acceptance Test
⁃ SAT – Site Acceptance Test
• Commission Projects

Industries Served (Preferred)
• Pharma
• Food and Beverage

Education
• Bachelor of Science
⁃ Automation, or
⁃ Electrical, or
⁃ Computer Engineering, or
⁃ (Equivalent)
• And we’re still hoping for that Wonderware Certification…

Other Good Stuff
• GMP (basics)
• Safety and Environmental Regs.
• And be really, really great with people
⁃ Customer type people;
⁃ Supplier type people;
⁃ Co-worker type people;
⁃ And everybody else, really.

Compensation

I’ll just tuck this in here. Don’t inflate current pay for future opportunity. The budget for this position is about perfect for a Sr. Automation Engineer. I think you’ll be totally fine with it.

If you want to be a Sr. Automation Engineer and you are a match, great!

That’s how you’ll be paid, and I think you’ll consider it fair. (Remember, by the way… Florida is a no income tax state.)

Now, if you’re a big time player, I can tell you this could well be the horse to get on. The price for being early… I’m not aware that this employer will pay up just for the privilege of getting to know you. I could be wrong.

The advantage of being an early high-producer… The employer tells me they pay very well for that. We’ll talk.

The Company

I’ve got an excellent feel for systems integrators after all these years.

This is a good one.

Worldwide in scope, this international design / build engineering firm is strongest in process environments… chemical, pharma, and food and beverage.

Although they’re new to me, they’ve been around a couple of decades, serving a string of Fortune 100 types.

I think they slipped under my radar, because – until recently – they’ve only been active in a half dozen cities, here in the U.S.

The thing is, they’re doing really, really impressive work.

Remember, I’ve been saying how very active the U.S. multi-nationals are overseas?

Well, it was one of those multi-nationals – after a four year construction project – that encouraged this engineering firm to get serious in our U.S. market.

And, indeed, they are getting serious. They’re currently arranging for their new U.S. Headquarters in Florida. And they’re reaching out to establish their initial core staff of full time, permanent Senior Automation Engineers.

Clearly, I have some trips ahead of me to learn more about this team.

Here’s What I Do Know…

They’ve been amazingly cooperative and supportive with me. (Isn’t that one of the first things you always ask me for? Find me an employer who is pleasant to be around?)

I like the management discipline they use for themselves and for their customers. As big fans of software and automation, running from the plant floor into the C-Suite, here’s an engineering firm that lives the technology it sells.

Out in the real world, they’re huge on Wonderware (InTouch is now 10.1, if you can believe it.) Rockwell’s RSLogix, I suppose, is obvious.

I’m hearing SCADA all the time, so I guess you can tell where they’re coming from. Networking, HMIs, and all that.

On a side note, I was also interested in their activity with GAMP 5. This is the Good Automated Manufacturing Practices “Risk-Based” system that takes quality control into new levels of precision, partly as good business and partly as a compliance and regulatory tool.

You may not run into it in your current role, but I’m interested in the kinds of minds that think through the intricacies of plant level production, up through MES, into ERP, and all the rest and still have brain cells left to monitor and guide suppliers. Oh, yes, and do it all to the satisfaction of eternally variable regulations.

It tells me these guys are running ahead of the power curve. I like that.

If you find satisfaction in working into the future, versus logging a lifetime of retro-fitting, you’ll understand my enthusiasm.

Tie all that in with a complete Design / Build offering, and you’ll begin to get a feel for the real power of this organization.

There’s definitely some exciting stuff going on here.

The Position

Thankfully, this one will ramp up gently.

You’ll have a little elbow room to get your bearings, and – happily enough – you can do an appropriate chunk of your work at home.

Speaking as a Florida resident, I’ll remind you to keep your laptop away from the pool. I’m just sayin’.

Here’s the situation…

A major project is pretty well finished right now.

We want a very pleasant Senior Automation Engineer to carry on, becoming the visible Go-To support source for an important international customer.

That puts you on-premises for that location on a regular basis.

No travel, though, for quite a while.

Unless you count the training and advanced certification.

Or the trip overseas to the Mother Ship.

Other than that, you’ll finish out the deliverables on the existing project. That includes fully documenting all of it (as built.) And I guarantee there will be a bunch of program tweaking, to make sure everything hums along, nice and smooth. You’ll need to do that work, too.

So, initially, then, if you were a pilot, you wouldn’t even be landing the plane. You’d just be taxiing it in to the hangar and cleaning it up.

Good news…

It Gets Interesting After That.

You’ll be onboard when the next project comes around.

There’s a dedicated sales effort kicking in for the U.S. Market, right now. And, remember, these guys sell big projects. Very big projects.

Of course, those new projects will stack on top of the existing and ongoing sales that are currently in the pipeline.

Somewhere along the way, you’ll transition into one of the new projects.

Odds are, it will be an automation project in a process environment. Probably for a pharmaceutical or a food and beverage company.

You’ll still be Florida based, but design and programming will return to your life. You’ll be an engineer again! Travel (on a humane scale) will also pick up.

Because you’ll be positioned to work the full project cycle, we’ll be counting on you to get the Functional Design Specs right. You’ll also be handling the Factory Acceptance Tests and the Site Acceptance Tests.

(Have you done these things before? Tell me about it in a separate document. These processes are a very big deal for this position.)

And commissioning is huge. (Tell me your war stories about that, too, would you?)

You’ll notice in my write-up about the company, I include a whole chat about GAMP 5. If you have a handle on Good Manufacturing Practices, let’s get that on the table, too. Personally, I can barely spell GMP; but these guys love it.

And since we’re cutting across so many disciplines, we might as well admit that Safety and Environmental regs are another entire universe. Persuade me you’re a good corporate citizen who won’t get the lawyers stirred up, OK?

Now, Into The Stratosphere…

If you’ve got the chops, you can probably see some enormous leverage building around this opportunity.

First, we’ve got a smallish, fast-growing, worldwide company that’s taken a liking to the U.S.

Next, it already has a high-profile following that wants to do business with it.

Finally, this is a slightly autonomous position where – it would seem – you could make anything you want out of it.

Well, you CAN make anything you want out of it.

The company is hoping to add a technically competent, broad-based, big-project senior engineer who is a pleasure to be around and who just naturally makes customers want to spend a lot of money.

If you’d care to move along that path, I can show you the route to a Director level position in as little as two years.

If that isn’t opportunity, then I’ve completely lost my touch.

Here’s the thing…

As usual, this one came out of the clear blue.

We’ve got maximum cooperation and literally no time to mess around. (Talk to me!!!)

The project is finished, work visas are expiring, and somebody is going to get an offer, umm, very quickly.

How Not To Apply

I wrote this insanely long description so you can get a proper description – and significance – of this opportunity.

Anybody who writes to me saying, “What’s this about?” gets deleted. No hard feelings. I’m just not going there.

For everybody else, I’m going to be a little short of time over the next few DAYS.

I truly need you to think this through, fill in the blanks, and come to me making as much sense as possible. As quickly as possible.

I’m talking to an international client who contacted me. The search is exclusive. We’ve had at least three long-running conversations.

They want a Senior Automation Engineer, and they want that engineer now.

I can book a phone interview fast.

But you’ve got to help me.

How To Apply – #1450

Read this post and understand it. It’s as accurate as I can make it, and it’s insanely descriptive.

If you want to send me an immediate Heads Up message and follow with more detail, that would be fine.

Please be sure all e-mails have my Search Number in the subject line.
It’s #1450.

I hate resumes, but I guess we’ll need one.

Mostly, I need you explain to me why you’re a fit for this position.

Remember, this is a high-profile position, with high dollar projects, and you get gobs of leeway to do things your own way. We’d kind of like to know that your way feels good to the company, and that you can COMMUNICATE well in the process.

The more you’re on your own, the better you need to be at communicating well, right?

Talk to me about DESIGN and PROGRAMMING for PROCESS environments.

You already know that InTouch and RSLogix products are a big deal. Are you up to speed? Certified?

Do you have SALES INSTINCTS? Some call it CUSTOMER CENTRIC.

Either way, if you’ve ever run your own business, you totally know what I mean.

Can you help these guys grow?

What else should I know?

Get it to me.

If you’re not a match, I’ll let you know, and we’ll look for something better when the dust settles.

Promise.

If you are a match, I have a guy banging on my door, trying to find you.

Let’s go.

Ted Dieck
Careers@dieck.us
(954) 915-0000