Position Summary
The Field Service and Controls Reliability Engineer is responsible for supporting a strong safety culture while delivering operational excellence in the maintenance, troubleshooting, calibration, upgrade, and continuous improvement of industrial equipment across multiple locations. This role requires a hands-on technical leader with a strong service background in controls, PLCs, drives, tuning, hydraulics, pneumatics, and electrical troubleshooting. The position also requires strong project management skills, effective collaboration, disciplined time and expense management, and the ability to manage multiple projects in field service and plant environments.
Key Responsibilities
- Promote and reinforce a proactive safety culture by following all safety policies, identifying risks, supporting corrective actions, and modeling safe work practices in plant and field service environments.
- Maintain, troubleshoot, repair, calibrate, and improve production and facility equipment to support uptime, reliability, quality, and operational performance.
- Lead or support equipment upgrades, controls improvements, automation enhancements, commissioning activities, and process optimization projects.
- Troubleshoot and support controls systems, PLCs, variable frequency drives, servo drives, instrumentation, electrical systems, tuning loops, hydraulic systems, pneumatic systems, and related industrial equipment.
- Manage multiple technical projects across multiple locations, including scope definition, scheduling, resource coordination, execution tracking, stakeholder communication, and closeout documentation.
- Perform equipment calibration and verification activities to ensure equipment accuracy, repeatability, compliance, and production readiness.
- Write clear technical reports, service summaries, project updates, root cause analyses, and operating procedures for maintenance, production, engineering, and leadership teams.
- Travel to company sites, customer locations, or field service assignments as required to support installations, troubleshooting, upgrades, training, and emergency response needs.
- Collaborate effectively with operations, maintenance, engineering, safety, quality, vendors, contractors, and site leadership to resolve problems and drive sustainable improvements.
- Manage time, priorities, travel logistics, project expenses, service documentation, and administrative requirements in a professional and timely manner.
Required Qualifications
- Strong technical background in industrial maintenance, field service, controls engineering, automation support, or equipment reliability.
- Demonstrated experience troubleshooting and supporting PLCs, drives, controls systems, electrical circuits, instrumentation, hydraulics, pneumatics, and mechanical equipment interfaces.
- Experience maintaining and upgrading industrial equipment in manufacturing, production, packaging, processing, or similar operational environments.
- Proven ability to manage multiple projects, priorities, and service requests across more than one location.
- Experience writing reports, operating procedures, work instructions, service documentation, and technical recommendations.
- Ability and willingness to travel as needed for field service, equipment support, project execution, training, and site visits.
- Strong communication, collaboration, problem-solving, planning, and organizational skills.
- Ability to work independently while also partnering effectively with cross-functional teams.
Preferred Qualifications
- Associate degree, technical certification, military technical training, or equivalent hands-on experience in controls, electrical, automation, mechatronics, industrial maintenance, or a related field.
- Experience with equipment commissioning, controls upgrades, drive replacements, PLC program troubleshooting, HMI support, and process tuning.
- Experience supporting multi-site manufacturing operations or traveling field service teams.
- Familiarity with preventive maintenance, reliability-centered maintenance, root cause analysis, lockout/tagout, electrical safety, and continuous improvement practices.
Technical Competencies
- Controls systems, PLC troubleshooting, HMI support, and automation diagnostics
- Variable frequency drives, servo drives, motor controls, and tuning
- Hydraulic and pneumatic system troubleshooting and adjustment
- Electrical troubleshooting, schematics, sensors, instrumentation, and industrial power systems
- Equipment calibration, verification, commissioning, and startup support
- Technical reporting, procedure writing, project documentation, and service records
- Project planning, scheduling, coordination, execution, and closeout across multiple sites
Success Factors
- Consistently works safely and encourages safe behavior in others.
- Responds quickly and effectively to equipment issues while identifying long-term corrective actions.
- Communicates technical information clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Balances urgent service needs with planned project work and documentation requirements.
- Builds strong working relationships with internal teams, external partners, and site stakeholders.
- Maintains professionalism while traveling, managing expenses, and representing the organization in the field.
Travel and Work Environment
This role may require frequent travel to manufacturing sites, customer facilities, vendor locations, or project locations. Work may be performed in production environments, maintenance areas, control rooms, field service settings, and office environments. The individual must be able to manage travel schedules, expenses, tools, documentation, and project priorities while maintaining safety, quality, and professionalism.
