Controls/Automation Software Engineer

We’re ALTEN Technology USA, an engineering company helping clients bring groundbreaking ideas to life—from advancing space exploration and life-saving medical devices to building autonomous electric vehicles. With 3,000+ experts across North America, we partner with leading companies in aerospace, medical devices, robotics, automotive, commercial vehicles, EVs, rail, and more.

As part of the global ALTEN Group—57,000+ engineers in 30 countries—we deliver across the entire product development cycle, from consulting to full project outsourcing.

When you join ALTEN Technology USA, you’ll collaborate on some of the world’s toughest engineering challenges, supported by mentorship, career growth opportunities, and comprehensive benefits. We take pride in fostering a culture where employees feel valued, supported, and inspired to grow.

Workplace: On-site, 5 days per week
Location: Marina, CA

We are seeking an engineer to build custom device drivers and data integrations that connect off-the-shelf automation equipment directly into our Ignition platform. This role is software-first. These systems do not use PLCs. Devices communicate over basic protocols (TCP/IP, serial) and are integrated via custom Python drivers running on edge devices, with data surfaced into Ignition Perspective and published over MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport). The engineer will own the path from raw byte-level device communication through driver development, API services, containerized deployment, and production rollout. 

Key Job Responsibilities
    • Write custom TCP/IP drivers in Python for off-the-shelf automation equipment and devices that do not ship with native SCADA connectivity
    • Manipulate and parse data at the byte level, constructing and decoding raw binary protocol frames, handling packing and unpacking, endianness, framing, and checksums
    • Interface directly with new and unfamiliar device types, reverse-engineering or implementing their communication interfaces (TCP/IP sockets, serial protocols, board-level or PCB-level interfaces) and mapping device functions into a usable driver layer
    • Stand up and validate new devices independently, bringing them online outside the production system before integrating them
    • Configure Ignition to interface with these devices in the absence of a PLC layer, developing screens and functionality in Ignition Perspective
    • Design and implement API services that expose device functionality, and own the deployment strategy for those services into production
    • Containerize drivers and services using Docker, and deploy them onto edge devices, including touchscreen industrial PCs on the floor
    • Manage container lifecycle in production, including image builds, versioning, updates, restart and recovery behavior, and resource constraints on edge hardware
    • Publish time-series device data over MQTT using standard industrial schemas, specifically Sparkplug B, including correct topic namespace, payload encoding, and birth/death certificate handling
    • Optimize for latency and cycle time, with a long-term mandate to reduce cycle time and deliver reliable real-time data
    • Build automation around the integration so it scales and replicates across devices and stations
    • Document driver interfaces, network architecture, container configurations, and deployment procedures
    
Required Qualifications
    • Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Controls Engineering, Mechatronics, Software Engineering, or equivalent technical field
    • Strong, production-grade Python development experience. This is a primary requirement, not a scripting side skill
    • Demonstrated experience writing custom TCP/IP or socket-level drivers for hardware devices
    • Hands-on experience manipulating data at the byte level, including binary protocol parsing, serialization, and bitwise operations
    • Hands-on experience with serial protocols and integrating off-the-shelf or board-level devices that lack turnkey connectivity
    • Working knowledge of MQTT, including standard industrial schemas such as Sparkplug B
    • Experience with Ignition (Inductive Automation), specifically Perspective, and the ability to articulate Perspective versus Vision tradeoffs
    • Experience designing and deploying API services, including deployment to production
    • Hands-on experience with Docker and containerization, including writing Dockerfiles, building images, and deploying containerized services
    • Experience deploying software to edge devices or industrial PCs
    • Comfortable working onsite in an active manufacturing environment
    
Preferred Qualifications
    • Deep MQTT Sparkplug B implementation experience (edge node and device lifecycle, birth/death certificates, protobuf payload encoding)
    • Experience with container orchestration and management at the edge (Docker Compose, Portainer, K3s, or comparable)
    • Experience with CI/CD pipelines for building and shipping containerized services
    • Experience with latency optimization and cycle-time reduction in real-time data systems
    • Prior work integrating devices into SCADA or MES platforms without an intermediate PLC layer
    • Exposure to aerospace, EV, or other regulated manufacturing environments where data traceability is critical
    • Experience with Ignition module development or gateway scripting
    • Familiarity with time-series data storage and retrieval at scale
    • Experience with Python's struct, socket, and asyncio libraries or equivalent low-level networking and binary-parsing tooling
     
Salary Range 
    • $120,000-$145,000
    • The actual salary offered is dependent on various factors including, but not limited to, location, the candidate’s combination of job-related knowledge, qualifications, skills, education, training, and experience 

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, genetic information, or pregnancy.

Please beware of job seeker scams and see this important notice on our careers page for more information about our recruiting process.

Compliance Notice: Alten USA is a federal contractor subject to the requirements of the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) and Executive Order 11246. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

Drug Screening Requirement: As a federal contractor, Alten USA maintains a drug-free workplace. All candidates selected for employment will be required to successfully complete a pre-employment drug screening as a condition of hire.