Description Job Title: Controls Engineering Supervisor – Development Reports to: VP of Operations Department: Engineering Location: 808 Timberlake Road, Fairmont, MN 56031 **Can work as Hybrid or Remote, but must live within reasonable driving distance to our office.
Position Summary: The Controls Engineering Supervisor – Development leads the Controls Engineers and HMI/SCADA Engineer within the Development Team to ensure the successful development, maintenance, and continuous improvement of Kahler Automation's controls products and platforms. This is a working supervisory role that combines hands-on technical contribution with personnel management responsibilities, including timecards, reviews, and mentoring.
The Supervisor ensures that controls products are developed and maintained using consistent architecture, standards, reusable code, and documentation. The Supervisor works closely with Product Management, Controls Engineering – Projects, Software Engineering, Service, and other departments to identify product improvements, resolve recurring issues, and ensure that controls products support the needs of the business and its customers.
Exhibit and promote the following values:
- Curious Attitude: An employee who is curious is motivated to take time to question and explore new things to find answers that will ensure the best outcomes for the organization.
- Focus on Quality: An employee who values quality has integrity and produces results that meet high standards set by the organization.
- Passion for Service: An employee who is service-oriented displays a positive behavior and responds to customers using good business practices to meet their needs and expectations.
- Dedicated Spirit: A dedicated employee is one who takes ownership of their role and the whole organization to ensure that goals are achieved.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Other duties may be assigned: Team Leadership & Supervision
- Own overall team development performance, product quality, standards adherence, and continuous improvement.
- Assign development and maintenance work based on workload, capability, priorities, and growth objectives.
- Monitor team workload and development priorities and adjust assignments as needed to meet commitments and balance workload across the team.
- Conduct performance reviews, approve timecards, manage PTO requests, and support career development.
- Mentor Controls Engineers on technical topics, product development, troubleshooting, and adherence to visual, logic and development standards.
- Support cross-training and skill diversification across the team.
- Facilitate Level 10 meetings for the Development team.
- Track and manage Rocks, To-Dos, Scorecards, and team Issues.
- Lead and manage a remote team while driving issue resolution and alignment with company priorities.
Controls Product Development
- Provide technical direction and oversight for the development of PLC logic, HMI/SCADA applications, and industrial communication solutions used in Kahler Automation products.
- Lead the development of new controls products and major enhancements to existing products in alignment with priorities set by Product Management and the Engineering Manager.
- Coordinate development priorities with Product Management, the Engineering Manager, and other cross-functional departments.
- Translate defined product requirements into practical controls architecture and technical solutions.
- Establish and maintain consistent controls architecture, programming practices, reusable code, and development standards.
- Serve as an escalation point for complex technical challenges involving Kahler Automation controls products.
- Review development work to ensure quality, completeness, maintainability, and consistency with established standards.
- Coordinate development testing to ensure new or modified products function as intended before release.
- Assist with evaluating new technologies, platforms, and tools to improve Kahler Automation controls products or development processes.
Standards, Architecture, Documentation
- Own and maintain controls engineering standards, reusable code libraries, templates, and development documentation used by the Development team.
- Oversee updates to shared code libraries and reusable components based on product development and field experience.
- Ensure development documentation is maintained and available to Controls Engineering, Projects, Service, Product Management, and Training as appropriate.
- Work with the Projects team to incorporate field learnings and project-driven improvements back into shared standards and libraries.
- Conduct or coordinate technical peer reviews of significant development work.
Agile/Sprint Execution
- Lead weekly sprint planning and sprint review meetings with the Development team.
- Maintain the Development team’s backlog and coordinate priorities with Product Management and company priorities.
- Track team velocity, blockers, and backlog management to drive predictable delivery.
- Ensure accountability for task completion and continuous process improvement.
- Identify and communicate development risks, resource constraints, and schedule concerns to the Engineering Manager and appropriate stakeholders.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Work collaboratively with Product Management, Controls Engineering – Projects, Software Engineering, Service, Electrical Design, CAD, Production, and other teams to develop and improve Kahler Automation products.
- Serve as a technical resource to Product Management during the definition and evaluation of controls-related product requirements.
- Provide the Projects team with technical guidance, standards, reusable components, and product updates needed to implement Kahler's controls products consistently.
- Work with Service and the Projects team to understand field issues and determine when an issue should be addressed through product improvements rather than project-specific solutions.
- Serve as a technical liaison to Training and other teams to ensure they have the knowledge and resources needed to support and educate end users on controls products.
- Collaborate with Product Management to communicate product changes and technical updates to affected teams.
Technical Contribution
- Participate directly in the development and troubleshooting of PLC logic, HMI configuration, and communication setups.
- Collaborate on high-impact or complex development efforts where technical coordination is critical.
- Provide technical assistance to Controls Engineers during complex problem-solving and debugging efforts.
- Assist with evaluating programming approaches, development tools, and technologies.
- Estimate development labor and evaluate technical resources required for development initiatives.
- Contribute to the creation of training materials and actively support technical knowledge-sharing sessions across teams as necessary.
This Job description is not comprehensive, and all employees must be flexible and willing to perform other duties as assigned by their supervisor.
Requirements
Qualifications: To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.
Education/Experience:
- 5–8+ years of automation experience in PLC and HMI programming, including demonstrated experience leading, mentoring or supervising other engineers.
- Proven ability to manage people, processes, and project deliverables simultaneously.
- Experience in structured engineering environments using code libraries, standards, and agile/sprint methods.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Proficiency with Rockwell Studio 5000, FactoryTalk View SE/ME, and Ignition.
- Familiarity with EOS methodology and tools (L10s, Rocks, To-Dos, IDS).
- Experience conducting technical peer reviews and mentoring junior engineers.
- Prior involvement with sprint planning or agile delivery in engineering settings.
- Experience coordinating with cross-functional departments such as project management, electrical design, CAD, and production.
Computer/Technical Skills:
- Proficient in Microsoft Office tools.
- Strong in PLC logic development, HMI/SCADA visualization, and industrial communication protocols.
- Familiar with managing shared code libraries, reusable components, and internal documentation tools.
- Ability to guide team members in debugging and testing across multiple automation platforms.
Reasoning Ability: Able to balance short-term project needs with long-term team and process development. Capable of identifying recurring issues or inefficiencies and driving resolution through people, process, or tooling improvements.
Math Ability: Ability to work with mathematical concepts such as probability and statistical inference, and fundamentals of plane and solid geometry and trigonometry. Ability to apply concepts such as fractions, percentages, ratios, and proportions to practical situations.
Language Ability: Ability to read and interpret documents such as safety rules, operating and maintenance instructions, and procedure manuals. Ability to write routine reports and correspondence. Ability to speak effectively before groups of customers or employees in the organization. Ability to read electrical schematics and familiar with piping and instrument drawing (PID) and product flow drawing (PFD).
Certificates and Licenses: Valid Driver's License
Travel: Occasional travel (approximately 5%) may be required but is not a regular or frequent part of this position. Travel may include destinations throughout North America by automobile, commercial airplane, or company airplane.
Work Environment and Physical Demands: The work environment characteristics and physical demands described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.
The employee must regularly lift and /or move up to 25 pounds, frequently lift and/or move up to 50 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 100 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus, while performing the duties of this job, the employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms; climb or balance; stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl; talk or hear and taste or smell. Must be able to accurately discriminate among colors.
