Job Description
Senior Automation Engineer
Location: Crossville, TN
Pay Rate: $110,000 - 130,000 per year
Employment Type: Full-Time Direct Hire
Employment Type: Full-Time Direct Hire
Comprehensive Benefits Package
Take a senior-level leadership role in industrial automation where you’ll have a direct impact on manufacturing reliability, equipment performance, and continuous improvement. This position goes well beyond day-to-day PLC troubleshooting—you’ll help lead automation strategy, modernize legacy systems, manage projects, and provide technical direction to automation and production teams.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the design, programming, implementation, troubleshooting, and improvement of industrial control systems.
- Provide advanced technical support for PLCs, HMIs, SCADA, motion controls, sensors, drives, and industrial communication networks.
- Lead automation projects from planning through implementation, tracking scope, priorities, workload, timelines, and deliverables.
- Perform advanced troubleshooting and root cause analysis for automation issues affecting production, quality, safety, and equipment availability.
- Drive the modernization of legacy SCADA applications through migration to the Ignition Automation platform.
- Establish and maintain standardized PLC software backup, version control, recovery, and change-traceability practices.
- Lead system integration, testing, debugging, commissioning, and machine startup activities.
- Develop and maintain control-system documentation, technical standards, software backups, and troubleshooting guides.
- Support preventive maintenance programs by ensuring automation-related PM tasks and controls checks are effective.
Qualifications
- Associate or Bachelor’s degree in Controls Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Automation, Mechatronics, or a related technical field preferred.
- 7–10+ years of industrial automation experience, preferably within high-volume manufacturing and fast-cycle or continuous-production environments.
- Strong PLC programming experience.
- Strong SCADA experience.
- Strong HMI experience.
- Experience configuring drives and industrial communication networks.
- Hands-on experience with system integration, commissioning, startup, debugging, and advanced troubleshooting.
Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.
Numbers & Facts
| Location | Crossville, TN |
| Industry | Staffing/Employment Agencies |
| Salary | $110,000–$130,000 Per Year |
| Company Size | 500 to 999 employees |
| Year Founded | 1969 |
| Website | http://www.sterling-engineering.com |
About Company
Sterling Engineering has been a trusted partner for engineering, project management, and staffing solutions for over five decades. We provide exceptional engineering/technical recruitment and engineering project services to clients nationwide:
- Engineering & Technical Recruitment - With our focus on engineering, technical, and IT, Sterling has the in-depth knowledge, industry expertise, and robust employee pipeline it takes to rapidly find talent for even the most difficult to fill positions. Sterling’s extensive recruitment methodology allows us to engage the most talented employees in the marketplace. We offer exciting work and career-building opportunities for our candidates, along with expert support at every step of the process.
- Engineering Project Services – Our experienced, multi-disciplined team of project managers, engineers, and designers, led by licensed Professional Engineers (PE), provide project management, engineering, design, and Commissioning, Qualification, and Validation (CQV) to manufacturing, OEM, and R&D customers. We work on complex, highly technical projects across a number of industry sectors, and our ability to scale and seamlessly integrate at multiple levels of your organization is what differentiates us.
Sterling offers a unique combination of engineering solutions and Best of Staffing level service to help our clients and talent achieve their goals.
Skills
- Automationunmatched
- Automation Engineeringunmatched
- Commissioningunmatched
- Continuous Improvementunmatched
- Control Engineeringunmatched
- Control Systemsunmatched
- Debugging Skillsunmatched
- Document Managementunmatched
- Documentation Standardsunmatched
- Electrical Engineeringunmatched
- Identify Issuesunmatched
- Integration Testingunmatched
- Leadershipunmatched
- Manufacturingunmatched
- Performance Managementunmatched
- Preventative Maintenanceunmatched
- Production Systemsunmatched
- Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)unmatched
- Project Planningunmatched
- Project/Program Managementunmatched
- Root Cause Analysisunmatched
- Safety/Work Safetyunmatched
- Software Administrationunmatched
- Source Code/Configuration Management (SCM)unmatched
- Startupunmatched
- Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)unmatched
- System Integration (SI)unmatched
- System Testunmatched
- Systems Administration/Managementunmatched
- Systems Maintenanceunmatched
- Technical Supportunmatched
- Technical Writingunmatched
- Traceabilityunmatched
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