Location: Remote, with travel to customer sites for installation, commissioning, and service as needed (40%)
ABOUT US
Client is a market leader in developing and delivering innovative healthcare solutions including medication management, mobile computing, and pharmacy automation. We are on a strategic mission to integrate digital capabilities and enhance product performance through robust enterprise architecture and R&D-driven innovation.
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ABOUT THIS ROLE
We are looking for a PLC and Mechatronics Engineer who works on controls software, performs machine commissioning, and helps achieve production continuity for our end customers: three disciplines in one engineer, mechanical, electrical, and controls. Our equipment serves pharmacy automation and central fill operations. Central fill is high-volume prescription fulfillment: orders route from retail, health-system, and mail-order pharmacies into a centralized facility where medication is filled, packaged, verified, labeled, and shipped back to patients at a scale no individual pharmacy could sustain, and our machines are what physically move product through that operation against fixed daily courier deadlines. You make individual components like actuators, sensors, servos, and smart devices work in coherence to achieve automation tasks with high reliability within these solutions. You assist our team during engineering and development, and will transition to hands-on tasks when projects arrive at the installation, commissioning, and long-term support phase. You report to the Engineering Manager and have no direct reports.
Key Responsibilities
Mechatronic System Design and Integration
- Assist our team in developing mechatronic products and systems, integrating mechanical, electrical, and control engineering into one working solution rather than three handovers.
- Translate machine requirements into a coherent concept: actuator and drive selection, sensor selection and placement, pneumatics, transmission and kinematics, cycle time budgets, and the control strategy that holds them together.
- Assemble, test, and commission prototypes, machines, and installations, supervise manufacturing, assembly, and installation activities, and provide the technical coordination that keeps mechanical, electrical, software, and production work converging on the same schedule.
PLC and Control Software Engineering
- Design, program, test, and maintain PLC software Siemens S7-1200 and S7-1500 in TIA Portal using the IEC 61131-3 language Ladder (LAD) and Structured Control Language (SCL).
- Assist our team in building PLC software as a reusable, maintainable asset rather than a per-machine artifact: standardized program structure, reusable function blocks and libraries, consistent naming and tagging conventions, parameterized instead of copied code, and machine and module templates that carry from one project to the next.
- Apply version control and change management to control software using TIA Portal Multiuser Engineering, with controlled baselines, documented change history, and unambiguous knowledge of which software version is running on which machine at which customer site.
- Design machine state and sequence logic, alarm and fault handling with diagnostics that name a cause, recipe and parameter management, and controlled recovery from faults, stops, and power loss.
HMI, SCADA, and Operator Interaction
- Design and program operator interfaces on platforms such as Siemens WinCC Unified screen structure and navigation, machine status and diagnostics, manual and service modes, alarm presentation, and user access levels.
- Design the operator experience so a fault is understandable and recoverable by production staff without calling engineering: clear alarm text, root-cause indication, and guided recovery.
Motion Control, Drives, and Industrial Networks
- Engineer motion control and drive systems: servo drives, frequency converters, axis configuration and tuning, homing and referencing strategies, positioning electronic gearing and camming, and synchronization between axes and with product flow.
- Configure, commission, and diagnose industrial networks and fieldbus systems by name, including PROFINETModbus TCP, and IO-Link, covering topology, addressing, device configuration, diagnostics, and network load.
- Design the machine network architecture together with IT and Software Engineering: segmentation between machine and plant networks, addressing schemes, switch and gateway configuration, and secure remote access for service.
Functional Safety and Machine Compliance
- Design, program, and validate safety functions on safety PLCs and safety relays
- Compile and maintain the technical documentation required for CE marking and Machinery Regulation conformity, and validate on the finished machine that every safety function performs as designed.
Connectivity to Higher-Level Systems
- Design and implement the interface from machine control to higher-level systems over OPC UA, MQTT, or equivalent, so machine state, production counts, alarms, and traceability data reach MES, middleware, and platform systems reliably.
- Define the data contract with Software Engineering rather than leaving it to be discovered on site: which tags and events are published, at what rate, in what structure, with which identifiers for machine, site, batch, and order, and how the interface behaves when the connection drops and recovers.
- Implement order, recipe, and job handling received from higher-level systems, and return status, confirmation, and exception information in the agreed structure.
Commissioning, Service Support, and Continuous Improvement
- Test and commission electrical, control, and mechatronic systems in the factory and on customer sites: dry runs, I/O checks, function tests, safety validation, and performance and cycle time verification, and support Factory Acceptance Testing and Site Acceptance Testing, including qualification activities such as IQ and OQ where the customer environment requires them.
- Provide third-line technical support to Service and Production on complex control and machine issues, and feed what the field actually does back into design and standard software.
- Deliver assigned projects on time and to the required quality standard, identify technical risks early and propose solutions, keep schematics, software documentation, functional descriptions, safety files, and commissioning records accurate and current, and transfer that knowledge to colleagues, Service, and customers.
- Contribute to the continuous improvement of products, processes, standard software, and design libraries, and work in accordance with company policies, quality guidelines, and safety instructions in a safe and organized working environment.
To Be Successful in This Role, You Will Need:
- A Bachelor's degree (HBO) or equivalent degree working in Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, Physics, or a comparable discipline
- 10+ years experience working and thinking level in Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Automation, or a comparable discipline, with demonstrated experience in machine building or industrial automation on machines you have built, commissioned, and put into production.
- Genuine breadth across three disciplines, mechanical, electrical, and control engineering, with the ability to work at the boundaries between them rather than inside one of them.
- Practical PLC programming expertise, Siemens S7-1200 and S7-1500 in TIA Portal with command of IEC 61131-3 languages
- Experience building structured, reusable PLC software: libraries, function blocks, naming and tagging standards, machine templates, and code review, together with working practice in version control and change management for control software such as TIA Portal Multiuser Engineering.
- HMI development experience, preferably Siemens WinCC
- Motion control and drive experience: servo frequency converters, axis tuning, homing, positioning, electronic gearing and camming, and multi-axis synchronization.
- Fieldbus and industrial network experience by name, including Modbus TCP, and IO-Link, with configuration and diagnostics you have done yourself.
- Knowledge of electrical schematics and technical drawings, electrical CAD such as EPLAN, and the applicable standards including IEC 60204-1, IEC 61439, and CE and Machinery Regulation requirements.
- Mechanical understanding sufficient to contribute to machine design: tolerances and fits, drive trains, pneumatics, and the mechanical consequence of a control decision.
- Knowledge of computers, IT infrastructures, and networks, and practical experience connecting machine control to higher-level systems over OPC UA, MQTT, or equivalent.
- Strong analytical and structured problem-solving skills, including the ability to diagnose a fault across mechanical, electrical, and software causes rather than the discipline you know best, plus the communication skills to advise colleagues, project management, and customers, and to work independently and prioritize under commissioning pressure.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in pharmacy automation, warehouse logistics, or another regulated production environment,
- Experience integrating machine vision systems, including the vision-to-PLC handshake, result handling, and reject management.
- Experience with robotics, pick-and-place, or delta and SCARA handling systems.
- Experience with virtual commissioning or simulation of machine behavior before hardware is available.
- Experience supporting an installed base internationally, including remote diagnostics and service.
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