Sr. Ignition Engineer
About this role
Who We Are:
Challenge Manufacturing’s mission is to manufacture with operational excellence by empowering our employee-owners. As a leading tier 1 supplier of complex metal assemblies for the global automotive industry, we drive innovative solutions for future mobility. We believe the best ideas come from individual unique perspectives. These ideas combined with the teamwork of industry leaders allow us to accomplish any challenge. Our team members take pride in the work we do and embody our core values of safety, ownership, and teamwork every day; they are the true driving force in our operations.
Challenge is proud to be one of the largest employee-owned automotive companies in North America. One of the many benefits of joining the Challenge team is the ESOP program. This program allows Challenge to give shares of the Company to all employee-owners annually. These shares are an additional retirement benefit that will continue to grow during your time at Challenge. Being part of an ESOP means our employee-owners share in Challenge’s success!
Challenge is #QualityDriven and #PeoplePowered!
Who We Want:
We are hiring a senior-level engineer to own the Ignition platform across our manufacturing environment. This role is focused on Ignition and is accountable for standards, architecture, reliability, and scalable delivery of plant dashboards/HMIs and operational data collection. This role provides internal technical ownership, governance, and long-term supportability of the platform.
What You'll Do:
• Own Ignition gateway architecture, configuration standards, backup/restore approach, and lifecycle (upgrades, redundancy, environments).
• Develop and standardize plant dashboards/HMIs (Perspective/Vision) using reusable templates, UDTs, and consistent tag models.
• Integrate Ignition with plant-floor systems (PLCs/devices via OPC UA and/or MQTT where applicable) and with databases for operational reporting.
• Establish engineering discipline: versioning, release practices, testing/validation patterns, documentation, and incident/root-cause practices.
• Monitor and improve platform reliability and performance; implement logging/alerting and operational runbooks.
• Partner with OT Automation, MES, Data/UNS, and Cyber teams to ensure safe, supportable integration patterns and clear ownership boundaries.
• Manage and review third-party Ignition work for alignment to standards and long-term maintainability.
When and Where:
This will be a 1st Shift / 9:00AM-5:00PM M-F position located at our Plant in Kansas City, MO (open to this position sitting at any of our locations).
Occasionally, this may require you to arrive early, stay late, or work on weekends, outside of our regular hours, to ensure we successfully meet customer needs, deadlines, or urgent requests.
What You Need to Have:
• 7+ years in industrial automation/SCADA/MES/IIoT environments with significant hands-on Ignition delivery.
• Strong experience with Ignition gateway configuration and project delivery; building HMIs/dashboards in Perspective and/or Vision.
• Experience integrating to PLCs/devices and industrial data sources (e.g., OPC UA; MQTT familiarity is a plus).
• Strong SQL skills for working with operational data stores (queries, performance, schemas used for reporting).
• Proven ability to lead technical standards, improve reliability, and mentor/guide other engineers and integrators.
Preferred Qualifications
• Experience with multi-site SCADA standardization and rollout programs.
• Experience with MES integrations (e.g., Plex) and/or data platforms (e.g., Snowflake/Fabric/UNS patterns).
• Ignition certification (Core/Gold) or comparable demonstrated expertise.
• Working knowledge of OT cybersecurity practices for SCADA (role-based access, certificates/SSL, segmentation alignment).
What We Offer:
We’re excited to offer a range of awesome benefits, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a Health Savings Account with annual employer contributions, Flexible Spending Accounts, company-paid Short-Term Disability and Basic Life Insurance, Voluntary Life and Long-Term Disability options, an Employer 401k Match, ESOP shares, tuition reimbursement, a Referral Bonus Program, Challenge Incentive Program, and paid time off.
Please note, while these benefits are part of what we offer, they may not all apply to this specific role. The details shared in this job description are intended to give you a general idea, but duties and responsibilities may evolve over time, with or without notice. And of course, we’re happy to provide reasonable accommodations to help individuals with disabilities succeed in their role.
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