Senior Ignition Developer
Location: San Antonio, TexasWork Schedule: Hybrid two days per week onsiteEmployment Type: Full-Time, Direct HireTravel: Approximately once per month to field assets in South Texas, typically for one to two daysCompensation: Competitive base salary plus a 10%15% annual performance-based bonusRelocation: Candidates must currently live in the San Antonio area or be willing to relocate
Position Overview
We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Ignition Developer to lead the technical development, implementation, and long-term support of an enterprise Ignition SCADA platform for an established energy operator.
The organization is undertaking a major, approximately 10-month migration from Cygnet SCADA to Inductive Automation Ignition. During the migration, this individual will serve as the internal technical lead and work closely with a third-party system integrator to guide architecture, development standards, testing, and deployment.
Following implementation, this position will become the organizations primary in-house Ignition resource, with full responsibility for ongoing application development, platform administration, troubleshooting, enhancements, and production support.
This is a hands-on development position requiring strong Ignition expertise, Python scripting capabilities, and experience building scalable, reusable SCADA applications. The ideal candidate is comfortable working independently and taking long-term ownership of a business-critical industrial platform.
Key Responsibilities
Ignition Development and Architecture
- Design, develop, configure, test, and support applications using Inductive Automation Ignition.
- Build responsive operator interfaces and dashboards using Ignition Perspective and/or Vision.
- Develop scalable tag structures, intelligent UDTs, reusable templates, and standardized data models.
- Create data-driven screens and dashboards using reusable components and structured attributes.
- Develop Python scripts to automate processes, extend platform functionality, manipulate data, and support application workflows.
- Configure and support alarming, historical data, trending, reporting, and visualization capabilities.
- Apply clean-code principles, documentation standards, version control practices, and structured testing throughout the development lifecycle.
- Establish development standards and best practices that support the long-term scalability and maintainability of the platform.
SCADA Migration and Integrator Oversight
- Serve as the internal technical lead during the migration from Cygnet to Ignition.
- Coordinate with and provide technical oversight to the third-party system integrator responsible for implementation.
- Review proposed system architecture, database structures, application designs, scripts, tag models, UDTs, and integration methods.
- Ensure the integrators work aligns with internal operational requirements and established Ignition development standards.
- Participate in design reviews, testing, validation, cutover planning, deployment, and post-implementation support.
- Identify technical risks, development concerns, and project dependencies, and communicate them proactively to internal teams and project stakeholders.
- Develop sufficient internal knowledge and documentation to assume full ownership of the platform following project completion.
Platform Administration and Support
- Maintain the Ignition SCADA environment to support availability, security, reliability, and performance.
- Manage Ignition gateways, project structures, security roles, authentication, and user access.
- Plan and execute platform upgrades, patching, backups, restoration procedures, and disaster-recovery activities.
- Participate in redundancy and failover testing.
- Troubleshoot application, gateway, tag, database, communication, and performance-related issues.
- Provide ongoing technical support for production systems, operational users, dashboards, and field-connected assets.
- Evaluate and implement platform improvements, application enhancements, and automation opportunities.
- Monitor system health and address issues that could affect data availability or operational visibility.
Industrial Communications and Integration
- Configure, test, and troubleshoot industrial communication protocols and interfaces, including:
- OPC and OPC UA
- MQTT
- Modbus
- Ethernet-based industrial communications
- Support communication between Ignition, field devices, PLCs, RTUs, databases, historians, and other operational systems.
- Collaborate with operations, automation, engineering, IT, and field personnel to resolve data and communication issues.
- Travel periodically to South Texas field assets to support testing, commissioning, troubleshooting, and system validation.
Documentation and Continuous Improvement
- Create and maintain technical documentation covering architecture, application standards, tag structures, UDTs, scripts, gateway configurations, integrations, support procedures, and disaster recovery.
- Develop repeatable procedures for application deployment, testing, troubleshooting, and production support.
- Identify opportunities to use Ignition scripting, automation, visualization, and data capabilities to improve business and operational processes.
- Recommend software enhancements, architectural changes, and configuration improvements that increase system reliability, usability, and performance.
Required Qualifications
- At least five years of related SCADA development, application engineering, or industrial automation experience.
- Strong hands-on development experience with Inductive Automation Ignition.
- Demonstrated experience developing Ignition applications rather than solely administering or supporting the platform.
- Experience with Ignition 8.0 or newer.
- Strong Python or Jython scripting experience within an Ignition environment.
- Experience with Ignition Perspective and/or Vision.
- Strong understanding of Ignition project structures, tag architecture, UDTs, templates, and reusable components.
- Experience developing data-driven SCADA screens and operational dashboards.
- Experience configuring alarming, historical data, trending, and reporting.
- Experience supporting Ignition gateways, security roles, user access, backups, upgrades, and production environments.
- Working knowledge of OPC, MQTT, Modbus, and industrial Ethernet communications.
- Solid understanding of networking fundamentals, system security, databases, and industrial communication architecture.
- Strong troubleshooting skills across applications, data, communications, and system performance.
- Ability to independently own a production Ignition platform and serve as the organizations primary subject-matter expert.
- Ability to communicate technical issues, risks, and recommendations clearly to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
- Associate degree from a college or technical school, equivalent technical training, or a comparable combination of education and relevant experience.
- Must currently reside in the San Antonio area or be willing to relocate.
- Ability to work onsite in San Antonio two days per week.
- Ability to travel to field assets in South Texas approximately once per month for one to two days.
Preferred Qualifications
- Ignition 8.0 or newer certification.
- Experience leading or supporting a large-scale SCADA migration to Ignition.
- Previous experience working with Cygnet SCADA.
- Experience reviewing or overseeing work performed by an Ignition system integrator.
- Experience within upstream or midstream oil and gas operations.
- Experience supporting geographically distributed field assets, including production facilities, pipelines, well sites, or related infrastructure.
- Familiarity with redundant Ignition architectures, failover testing, disaster recovery, and high-availability production environments.
- Experience integrating Ignition with SQL databases, historians, enterprise applications, and external reporting systems.
Ideal Candidate Profile
The strongest candidate will be a hands-on Ignition developer who can lead the technical side of a major migration while preparing to assume complete ownership of the platform. This individual should be comfortable reviewing an integrators work, challenging architectural decisions when necessary, writing production-level code, supporting operational users, and independently managing a critical SCADA application after deployment.