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 Integrity.
The Role
As the Digital Manufacturing Lead you will own the digital manufacturing layer - SCADA, batch execution, historian, MES, and the plant data layer - for a massive 1 million square foot manufacturing facility expansion. You will lead the SCADA, MES, and data engineers who build the manufacturing stack. This is a high-impact, high-ownership architecture and leadership role, based in Durham, NC and transitioning to the Benson, NC facility as commissioning begins, with occasional travel to OEM factory acceptance tests and platform vendor engagements.
Core Expectations & Responsibilities
- Own the cell/area normalization layer that takes non-standard OEM skids and presents one consistent model of the plant to every system above it. Architecture, build sequence, redundancy, and failure behavior.
- Hold the functional allocation between SCADA, batch execution, MES, and the data layer - which system owns recipe authority, where genealogy is assembled, what belongs in the historian versus the transactional record, and what an operator does at which screen.
- Lead the remaining platform evaluations - batch execution, historian architecture, SCADA, and the MES integration pattern
- Own the MES thread across the running pilot and the larger facility implementation - production order flow, electronic batch records, material genealogy, and the ERP interface contract.
- Own the plant information model and the reporting layer built on it - OEE, downtime, yield, and quality visibility that process engineering, quality, and operations can act on without an engineer.
- Lead, develop, and grow the SCADA, MES, and data engineering team - technical direction, design review, configuration and code standards, and hiring as the plant scales. Serve as the senior escalation point for complex plant-data, SCADA, and MES issues.
- Direct system integrator surge staff and platform vendor delivery teams executing under your standards, and hold contractual knowledge-transfer criteria so the delivered system is ours to operate and modify after they leave.
Deliverables You Will Develop, Review, or Support
- Normalization layer architecture, unified namespace specification, plant information model, tag and equipment naming standards, and platform evaluation decision records.
- Control room and plant floor HMI screens, tag databases, alarm configuration, historian collection standards, MES/SCADA transaction lists, network and IP lists, password inventories, and system backups.
- ISA-95 object models, electronic batch record and genealogy structures, ERP interface specifications, database schemas, and the plant interface catalog.
- OEM data contract requirements, integration test protocols, FAT and SAT data acceptance criteria, and vendor knowledge-transfer and handover criteria.
- OEE and downtime dashboards, quality and genealogy reports, data quality monitoring, and system administration, backup, and disaster recovery procedures.
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 Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Automation Engineering, Mechatronics, or a 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 the judgment to assess licensing models, redundancy architectures, and openness of data access on evidence rather than familiarity.
- Production experience with OPC UA and MQTT/Sparkplug B at architecture level - broker topology and redundancy, store-and-forward, payload and 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 the 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.
Must be a U.S. Person due to required access to U.S. export-controlled information or facilities
Desired Skills
- Hands-on delivery with Sepasoft, FactoryTalk Batch, WinCC Unified SIQUENCE, or equivalent, and a considered view on where the batch engine belongs.
- Greenfield Scale-Up: Systems designed before the building was finished, with construction and equipment schedules setting the dates.
- Hybrid Batch and Discrete Processes: A process that moves batch to discrete and back more than once per product; materials, metals, or powder processing especially.
- Heterogeneous OEM Integration: Integrating independently sourced equipment, including machines shipped without a data path that required a gateway, network card, or vendor interface retrofit.
- Historian Architecture at Scale: Collection strategy, retention and archiving, and query performance that holds up when the plant is full.
- Experience carrying a plant through a platform migration or vendor change - you know what actually survives one.
- Familiarity with Python, SQL, or other high-level languages for automation and data analytics.
- Experience in heavy industrial, greenfield, or metallurgical manufacturing environments, or in regulated industries such as Defense, Aerospace, or Automotive.
Physical and Environmental Requirements
The position requires regular presence on the production floor and the ability to navigate all areas of the facility. Candidates must be able to climb stairs, stand and walk for extended periods, and work in environments that may be hot, humid, or noisy. The role also requires the use of personal protective equipment, including respirators, and adherence to all applicable safety policies, procedures, and regulatory requirements. Employees must be able to complete required fit testing, wear appropriate PPE for the duration of assigned tasks, and respond safely to changing conditions within the production environment.
