Controls Engineering Manager

Join EAD to help solve complex controls and automation challenges in industrial facilities.

EAD supports projects across industrial manufacturing facilities, including food processing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and parcel handling environments. This role offers the opportunity to lead a controls engineering team across projects of varying size and complexity in a fast-paced, multi-discipline, and practical engineering setting.

The Controls Engineering Manager leads the controls engineering team to deliver high-quality work on scope, on time, and on budget while building a strong, healthy, and capable team. This role is responsible for coordinating schedules and resources, guiding proposal and estimate development, mentoring team members, and ensuring controls engineering work meets EAD standards and client expectations. This is a leader-first role: success comes primarily from leading people, planning work, managing risk, and improving team performance, while also providing strong controls engineering judgment when needed. The role also has leadership oversight of the panel shop, ensuring that the panel shop team has what it needs to succeed and remains aligned with project, quality, and department needs.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, success means:

• Delivering controls engineering work on scope, on time, on budget, and at the expected quality level.
• Planning and balancing team workloads so the right people are on the right work at the right time.
• Leading strong proposals and estimates with clear scope, realistic assumptions, and early identification of execution risk.
• Strengthening client relationships and contributing to follow-on opportunities that support a healthy pipeline of controls work.
• Growing and mentoring the controls team so capability, accountability, and engagement increase over time.
• Strengthening quality, consistency, and continuous improvement across controls engineering practices.
• Building trust with Project Managers, clients, and internal partners through proactive communication and dependable execution.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the controls engineering team by setting priorities, assigning resources, and coordinating work to meet scope, schedule, budget, and quality expectations.
• Build and maintain strong client relationships, identify follow-on opportunities, and partner with Business Development, Project Managers, and other leaders to support continued growth of the controls team.
• Balance workloads across the team to maximize productivity, support healthy utilization, and avoid burnout or idle time.
• Lead the controls portion of proposals and estimates, including scope definition, staffing assumptions, schedule input, hours forecasting, and risk identification.
• See around corners on proposals, estimates, staffing, and project execution by identifying likely risks, gaps, dependencies, and delivery challenges before they create problems.
• Guide and review controls engineering work to ensure sound technical judgment, practical execution, and compliance with applicable standards and EAD expectations.
• Partner with Project Managers and other discipline leaders to align controls scope, staffing, priorities, and client expectations across projects.
• Mentor, coach, and develop controls engineers and designers through regular feedback, technical guidance, and career development support.
• Support hiring, onboarding, performance management, and succession planning for the controls team.
• Lead through the Fabrication Supervisor to ensure the panel shop has the resources, direction, coordination, and support needed to succeed, while maintaining alignment with project needs and department priorities.
• Build and maintain department processes, tools, and standards that improve quality, predictability, efficiency, and consistency.
• Communicate clearly with clients and internal teams regarding priorities, risks, decisions, and status, especially when tradeoffs or course correction are needed.
• Provide controls engineering subject matter expertise where needed, especially in strategy, review, and high-risk decisions, without making hands-on execution the primary focus of the role.
• Champion safety, quality, and continuous improvement across the controls team.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related technical field; equivalent relevant experience may also be considered.
• Strong experience in controls engineering for industrial or manufacturing facilities, including experience with programmable logic controller (PLC), distributed control system (DCS), Human-Machine Interface (HMI), and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) environments.
• Progressive leadership experience overseeing people, work assignments, and team performance in a multi-project environment.
• Experience leading or materially contributing to proposals, estimates, staffing plans, and execution planning.
• Experience working with multi-discipline project teams and coordinating with Project Managers, clients, vendors, and other stakeholders.
• Strong ability to prioritize resources, manage competing demands, and make sound decisions with incomplete information.
• Strong written and verbal communication, including the ability to communicate effectively with both technical teams and client decision makers.
• Working knowledge of applicable controls-related codes and standards.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in food and beverage, life sciences, pharmaceutical, parcel, or other industrial manufacturing environments.
• Professional Engineer (PE), Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Automation Professional (CAP), or similar relevant credential.
• Established industry relationships and a demonstrated ability to build client trust, support repeat business, and contribute to growth are strongly preferred.
• Experience developing team standards, department processes, and quality review practices.
• Experience mentoring engineers into broader project leadership and client-facing responsibilities.

Behavioral Expectations

• Acts with integrity, sound judgment, and professionalism.
• Owns outcomes, follows through, and creates clarity when priorities or conditions change.
• Brings a calm, solution-oriented mindset to complex delivery and people challenges.
• Leads in a way that helps the broader team succeed, not just the individual project.
• Seeks to understand first, especially when assessing project risk, team issues, and client concerns.
• Anticipates problems early and addresses them before they affect scope, schedule, budget, or quality.
• Demonstrates a high degree of self-motivation and performs in a highly independent manner with minimal supervision

Working Conditions

• Office, plant, or client site environment*
• Ability to perform occasional field and client-site work and maintain a valid driver's license.
• Ability to sit and work at computer for extended periods of time
• Ability to walk up numerous flights of stairs or ladders multiple times a day and/or work in tight spaces in extreme conditions
• May work near moving mechanical parts and equipment*
• Office, commercial and/or industrial setting with the potential of exposure to fumes or airborne particles, toxic or caustic chemicals*
• Ability to lift and/or move up to 50 lbs.*
• Periodic weekend, holiday or evening work as needed
• Travel required

*EAD will provide training, administrative/engineering controls, and personal protective equipment as necessary.

We strongly believe that diversity of experience, perspectives, and background will lead to a better workplace for our employees and a better product for our customers.

EAD is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Duties, responsibilities and activities may change, or new ones may be assigned at any time with or without notice.