Automation Engineer

ABOUT VOW

Vow is a cultured meat company on a mission to feed billions and create food that’s good for your tastebuds, your health and your planet. We’re bringing together cutting edge innovations in science, engineering, culinary and design to create new meats that meat lovers can choose selfishly because it’s nutritious and delicious, and we’re doing so in a sustainable way.

Our Software & Automation team builds the intelligent systems that make this possible - real-time control of factory equipment through our in-house automation platform, Vow Process Control. We're a small, high-performing team that values pragmatic delivery, iterative improvement, and genuine cross-functional partnership.

THE ROLE

We’ve built the foundations of a factory automation system that already controls bioreactors, centrifuges, CIP stations, and media mixers. The straightforward automation work is mostly in place. What remains is the more interesting part: solving the messy, high-leverage problems that sit at the boundary of software, hardware, and process. This role is about closing the harder automation gaps, improving system robustness under real operating conditions, and building the next layer of automation needed to make the factory substantially more software-driven over the next 12–18 months. Success in this role means thinking at the factory level - designing, integrating, and refining how systems interact to enable seamless, autonomous factory operations.

As factory objectives evolve, you’ll work with engineers, process developers, and operators to introduce new processes for new product lines and variants, and to adapt automation as quality and operational priorities change. You’ll regularly be on the factory floor commissioning equipment, troubleshooting hardware, and talking directly to the people who use what you build.

THE EXPERIENCE/SKILLS YOU WILL BRING:

• Bachelor's degree in a relevant engineering discipline (Electrical, Systems, Mechatronics, Computer Science, etc) or equivalent professional experience.

• Experience designing, deploying, and supporting control or automation systems in real operating environments, including taking systems from concept through to production and ongoing operation.

• Foundational understanding of at least one modern programming language (e.g. Python, C++, Javascript/Typescript)

• Comfortable using modern software engineering tools, including AI-assisted development and debugging, to work effectively in unfamiliar codebases.

• Some experience integrating hardware with electrical systems. Specific protocol knowledge (Modbus, OPC-UA, MQTT, etc.) is a plus, but we care more about how quickly you learn new systems.

• Solid understanding of mechanical and electrical principles relevant to automated equipment

• You communicate proactively, bring solutions not just problems, and don't wait to be chased. You ship at the right level of maturity, stay solution-oriented when priorities shift, and protect your focus for the highest-impact work.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Keep automation running and make it better. Our automation is a work in progress - some parts are solid, others require improvement. You'll iterate alongside the engineers who built them: understanding the current state, improving what's fragile, and closing gaps. That means working with Claude to understand Python, looking at Grafana, tuning PIDs, setting up alerts, and training operators to respond to them.

Increase the level of automation. This is the fun part. We're turning a factory that relies on operators running between equipment into one that largely runs itself. You'll work with operators and process teams to figure out which manual steps to tackle next, define the process changes needed to enable it, and deliver - sometimes by writing new control logic, sometimes by introducing new hardware, sometimes by proving out an approach you're not sure will work yet. You'll be given broad problems like "we need an automated system for [x] purification after centrifugation - figure out the approach, liaise with the process team, and make it happen."

Integrate hardware and software. Procure and install IO components (sensors, valves, pumps, IO modules). Work with mechanical engineers to implement hardware and software changes that actually ladder up together. Debug and improve low-level communication interfaces (Modbus, OPC-UA, MQTT, IO-Link, EtherNet/IP).

Collaborate with process teams. Work directly with upstream, downstream, and process development engineers to build automation for new processes and modify existing ones. You'll need to understand what they're trying to achieve, translate that into automation requirements, and negotiate scope and timing.

Work closely with software engineers. You sit on a team with software engineers who build and maintain the platform with your help. You'll collaborate with them to improve it - contributing where you want to, and shaping the direction based on what you see on the floor. You'll also make DevOps and tooling improvements to make yourself and the rest of the team improvement powerhouses.

Prioritise across competing demands. Multiple stakeholders - operators, process teams, production - will need different things from you at the same time. You'll need to manage that actively: understand what's highest-impact, communicate trade-offs, protect your focus, and keep people informed about what's coming and what's not.

LOCATION & WORK STYLE

• Factory-first: Hardware lives in Alexandria, so most days you’ll be on site - observing, testing, and talking with operators.

• High-trust flexibility: Need heads-down time at home or to shift hours? Use your judgment, coordinate with the team, and go for it.

• In-person culture: We default to face-to-face because fast iteration across software, hardware, and biology works best that way. Remote is the exception, not the norm. Most of our team members spend around 4 days per week on site.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Within 3 months

• Get familiar with our in-house automation architecture (VPC) and deploy your first changes to production. We don't use standard PLCs, so whatever you know, there'll be new things to learn - you'll be taught by experienced engineers and learn by doing.

• Build working fluency with AI-assisted development. We're an AI-first team and we'll invest time getting you up to speed.

• Learn the broad strokes of cultured meat bioprocessing — how the factory works, core unit operations, utilities, and the key control loops.

• Build relationships with process and operations teams. You'll inevitably be asked to fix small things — that's how trust starts.

• Debug production issues and respond to technology failures with support from other engineers.

Within 6 months

• Own a meaningful automation project or a series of high-leverage improvements to existing systems - e.g. taking a unit operation to full automation, removing the manual steps between two unit ops, or hardening edge-case handling across a system.

• Be comfortable using AI to write code, deploying across multiple machines, and increasingly self-sufficient in debugging issues independently.

• Have independently procured and installed hardware (sensors, valves, IO modules) for at least one project - from spec'ing components through to commissioning.

• Leave behind automation that operators can actually run and troubleshoot without calling you back. That means good alerts, clear documentation, and operators trained to respond.

• Become a trusted resource on cross-functional projects, helping the team prioritise based on automation impact and investment.

• Start informing the team roadmap: suggesting improvements, helping with estimates and planning.

Within 12 months

• Manage multiple projects simultaneously, own key systems, and be looked to as an automation expert for large parts of the factory.

• Have delivered automation for at least one new or substantially modifie