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Vulcan Elements manufactures American rare-earth permanent magnets for defense, aerospace, and automotive applications. As Digital Manufacturing Lead, you will own the complete digital manufacturing layer—SCADA, batch execution, historian, MES, and plant data infrastructure—for a 1 million square foot manufacturing facility expansion. You will lead a team of SCADA, MES, and data engineers building the manufacturing stack, with primary responsibility for architecture, standards, and delivery.
Key responsibilities include:
- Own the cell/area normalization layer that abstracts non-standard OEM skids into a unified plant model, including architecture, build sequence, redundancy, and failure behavior.
- Define functional allocation between SCADA, batch execution, MES, and data layers—determining recipe authority, genealogy assembly, historian vs. transactional record placement, and operator workflows.
- Lead remaining platform evaluations for batch execution, historian architecture, SCADA, and MES integration patterns.
- Own the MES thread across pilot and facility implementation: production order flow, electronic batch records, material genealogy, and ERP interface contracts.
- Own the plant information model and reporting layer (OEE, downtime, yield, quality visibility) enabling process engineering, quality, and operations to act independently.
- Lead, develop, and grow the SCADA, MES, and data engineering team; set technical direction, conduct design reviews, establish standards, and hire as the plant scales. Serve as senior escalation point for complex plant-data, SCADA, and MES issues.
- Direct system integrator and platform vendor delivery teams; hold contractual knowledge-transfer criteria ensuring the delivered system is operationally owned and modifiable post-delivery.
Deliverables include normalization layer architecture, unified namespace specification, plant information model, tag/equipment naming standards, platform evaluation decision records, HMI screens, tag databases, alarm configuration, historian collection standards, ISA-95 object models, electronic batch record structures, ERP interface specifications, database schemas, OEM data contract requirements, integration test protocols, FAT/SAT acceptance criteria, vendor knowledge-transfer criteria, OEE/downtime dashboards, quality/genealogy reports, data quality monitoring, and system administration/backup/disaster recovery procedures.
The role is based in Durham, NC, transitioning to Benson, NC as commissioning begins, with occasional travel to OEM factory acceptance tests and platform vendor engagements. Regular presence on the production floor is required; candidates must be able to climb stairs, stand/walk for extended periods, work in hot/humid/noisy environments, and use PPE including respirators.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Automation Engineering, Mechatronics, or related field with 8+ years of experience across industrial automation, manufacturing systems, and plant data platforms.
- Architecture-level ownership (not configuration alone) of SCADA, MES/MOM, historian, or plant data platforms, including at least one system you designed that is still running in production.
- Hands-on depth in two or more supervisory or manufacturing systems ecosystems (Ignition, Rockwell FactoryTalk, Siemens WinCC Unified/Opcenter, AVEVA, or comparable) with judgment to assess licensing models, redundancy architectures, and data access openness on evidence.
- Production experience with OPC UA and MQTT/Sparkplug B at architecture level (broker topology, redundancy, store-and-forward, payload/schema design and versioning) plus proficiency with Ethernet/IP, Profinet, and similar industrial communication standards.
- Working fluency in ISA-95 (production orders, material genealogy, equipment models, batch records) and ISA-88 sufficient to place a batch engine and defend placement; strong SQL, relational data modeling, and time-series data handling.
- Demonstrated leadership of engineers: setting technical direction, developing people, and accountability for delivery you did not personally execute.
- U.S. Person status required due to access to U.S. export-controlled information or facilities.
DESIRED SKILLS:
- Hands-on delivery with Sepasoft, FactoryTalk Batch, WinCC Unified SIQUENCE, or equivalent, with considered view on batch engine placement.
- Greenfield scale-up experience: systems designed before building completion, with construction and equipment schedules setting dates.
- Hybrid batch and discrete process experience: processes moving batch to discrete and back multiple times per product; materials, metals, or powder processing especially.
- Heterogeneous OEM integration: integrating independently sourced equipment, including machines requiring gateway, network card, or vendor interface retrofit.
- Historian architecture at scale: collection strategy, retention/archiving, and query performance at full plant capacity.
- Experience carrying a plant through platform migration or vendor change.
- Familiarity with Python, SQL, or other high-level languages for automation and data analytics.
- Experience in heavy industrial, greenfield, or metallurgical manufacturing, or regulated industries (Defense, Aerospace, Automotive).
