Controls Engineer Jobs

AGRI-NEO – JOB DESCRIPTION

Controls Engineer

Member of: Engineering Team

Location: Toronto, Ontario

COMPANY

Agri-Neo’s mission is to help safely feed the world. Our vision to accomplish this is to set new food safety standards with our treatments for many foods. Our first product line is Neo-Pure, which leverages our proprietary technology of liquid formulas and systems that apply our solutions onto spices, seeds, and nuts in food processing facilities. These solutions control pathogens such as Salmonella and E. coli to ensure the food is safe to eat and to prevent recalls. We have several customers throughout North America and Latin America, including large mainstream food processors that treat food continuously at high throughputs. We are scaling up our products at more mainstream customer sites to ensure that we set new food safety standards to help safely feed the world.

POSITION SUMMARY

Agri-Neo is seeking a highly motivated Controls Engineer to assist in the development of new and existing pasteurization systems. The Candidate will be responsible for all electrical and controls-based improvements made to the system. He/She will be responsible for the specifications and layouts of all electrical cabinets and components. Once built, the candidate will be responsible for verifying the build and updating/programming all control related devices, including but not limited to, PLCs, VFDs, HMIs, servo drives, and safety devices from power-on, debugging, fine tuning, and validation. He/She will also act in a supporting role for system installations, working with the operations team and customer controls groups to ensure a speedy integration into the facility. The Candidate will work across functions to help develop the next generation of pasteurization systems. This includes electrical cabinet layouts, program architecture and development, hardware selection, and system reporting/data management. The ideal Candidate must be able to work in a fast-paced environment, have a high attention to detail, strong documentation management skills, and the ability to communicate to technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Manage electrical builds and field wiring, including verification plans, documentation, and debugging.
• Maintain and improve current remote capabilities, data management, and reporting of all systems.
• Develop and improve HMI layouts so that they are aesthetically simple while providing adequate feedback for troubleshooting.
• Responsible for developing the controls of Agri-Neo’s next generation system as the company ventures into new food categories and industries.
• Responsible for the layout of all electrical control panels for current and new system builds which are NFPA79/NEC/UL508A compliant. This includes but is not limited to electrical drawings, as-built drawings, BOMs, specifications, and instructions.
• Responsible for remotely updating all control-based devices of the systems that are currently in use across North America. These efforts will be to improve uptime, usability, and/or safety and go hand in hand with any electrical updates. Development and implementation will be done in conjunction with the operations team and will require some travel to customer sites, approximately 10-20% of the time.
• Responsible for all electrical component selection, balancing product specifications, process control requirements, layout complexity, cost, quality, and lead-time limitations.
• Responsible for developing improvements to electrical cabinets and hardware currently in use at customer sites.
• Assist the Operations team with remote support and troubleshooting when needed.
• Assist the Operations team with on-site integration of our system with the customers controls group.
• Responsible for managing and documenting all electrical and controls-based improvements or changes made at a customer site during the entire life of the system.

QUALIFICATIONS

• 2-7 years of experience as a hands-on Controls Engineer or Applications Engineer.
• BS/MS Electrical Engineering or equivalent (Controls and Computer Control Systems, Mechatronic Engineering, Automation Engineering, etc.)
• Must have a valid passport and the ability to travel across North America.
• Experience working in a food facility is an asset.

SKILLS

• Proficiency creating detailed electrical schematics in CAD (AutoCAD Electrical preferred).
• Experience working with OEMs, contractors, and facility personnel.
• Experience in ethernet communication between PLCs, databases, and components.
• Must have a well-defined methodology for maintaining code structure and organization. Ability to program complex processes including data acquisition, reporting, and PID control.
• Hardworking with the willingness to occasionally work off hours as our customers span several time zones.
• Excellent PLC programming ability (Allen Bradley is a must, B&R is a nice to have but must be willing to learn).
• Experience working with virtual machines and XL reporter.
• Must be able to travel 10-20% of the time.
• Proficiency programming and tuning variable frequency drives and controllers.
• Proficiency selecting appropriate circuit protectors, wire and cable, sensors, safety hardware, PLC hardware, remote I/O, VFD and servo systems.