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Manufacturing Data & MES Engineer

Research Triangle Park, NC

Vulcan Elements is manufacturing American rare-earth permanent magnets for a secure, resilient future. With a focus on national security and economic resiliency, we serve critical industries such as defense, aerospace, and automotive powering a high-technology future. Vulcan Elements is building a team of ambitious professionals committed to Mission Focus, Technical Excellence, and Transparency. This program operates under U.S. government security requirements; candidates must be U.S. persons and able to work with Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).

As the Manufacturing Data & MES Engineer you will own the manufacturing execution and plant-data backbone from a running pilot facility today to a massive 1 million square foot manufacturing facility expansion. You will embed with the vendor team implementing MES on our pilot as the designated knowledge-transfer engineer, close the pilot’s live data-integration gaps, and define the platform-neutral data architecture that survives whatever SCADA, batch, MES, and historian stack the site selects. As manufacturing scales, you will shape how the MES is implemented from pilot to production. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role requiring deep technical expertise across manufacturing systems and data engineering. 

Responsibilities: 

  • Embed with the pilot MES implementation as the designated internal knowledge-transfer target with contractual handover criteria; own the system outright after vendor handover, through go-live and stabilization. 
  • Close the pilot’s data-integration gaps: batch/tag contextualization, historian-to-record mapping, and reliable interface plumbing between plant-floor and business systems. 
  • Design and operate the plant data architecture: entity models (material, batch, equipment, test results), the interface catalog, and an owned contextualization database independent of any single vendor platform. 
  • Build and maintain REST/HTTP integrations between MES, SCADA, laboratory (LIMS-class) systems, and the ERP boundary, with production-grade error handling, idempotency, retries, and logging. 
  • Define ISA-95 object models and the electronic batch record and material genealogy structure for a make-to-stock magnet manufacturing flow. 
  • Write the data-access, openness, and database-dependency criteria into the site SCADA/batch/historian/MES platform evaluation, and support structured proofs-of-concept on pilot infrastructure. 
  • Deliver reporting and self-serve analytics access for process engineering from pilot and production data. 
  • Establish schema versioning, units/timestamp/identifier discipline, and missing-and-duplicate record handling across all plant data pipelines. 

Deliverables You Will Develop, Review, or Support 

  • Pilot MES configuration and handover documentation, electronic batch record and genealogy design 
  • Canonical entity models, the plant interface catalog, contextualization database schemas, and integration specifications. 
  • REST interface implementations, ETL/pipeline code with error handling and logging to support the business data engineering team, and interface monitoring dashboards. 
  • Platform-evaluation data criteria and proof-of-concept results, plus reporting and analytics deliverables for process engineering. 

Responsibilities and tasks outlined are not exhaustive and may change as determined by the needs of the business. 

Qualifications 

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field with 5+ years spanning manufacturing systems (MES/MOM) and data engineering.
  • Strong SQL and relational database design (PostgreSQL, SQL Server, or similar) and time-series data handling experience. 
  • REST API design and integration development in production (Python, JavaScript, or similar), including failure-mode engineering: retries, idempotency, dead-letter handling. 
  • Working knowledge of ISA-95 concepts - production orders, material genealogy, equipment models, batch records - and experience integrating plant-floor systems (historians, SCADA, PLC data) with business systems (ERP). 

Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export-controlled information or facilities 

Preferred Skills 

  • Ability to synthesize complex and interwoven topics to individual stakeholders and drive adoption, decision-making for defining criticality of what to track and how from an engineering and business perspective. 
  • OPCUA Integration experience 
  • Experience in higher level data visualization software for engineer, scientist, and/or business stakeholder consumption. Examples include Tableau, Hex, Grafana, etc… 
  • Hands-on configuration experience with a commercial MES platform (FactoryTalk Production Centre, AVEVA MES, Tulip, or similar). 
  • Time-series database depth (TimescaleDB, InfluxDB) or OT historian experience (PI, Canary, FactoryTalk Historian, Ignition). 
  • OT networking and cybersecurity conceptual understanding and operation. NIST 800-171 control families and CMMC best practices 
  • Batch manufacturing or materials-processing industry background. 
  • Experience defining data architecture ahead of platform selection or surviving a platform migration. 
  • Experience in regulated industries such as Defense, Aerospace, or Automotive.

 

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