Top 5 Things You Need to Know About Controls and Automation Engineering!

what's going on you guys welcome back to the channel and today i'm going to be counting down my top five things you need to know before becoming a controls and automation engineer including what they do what sort of education is required as well as what type of companies are hiring in this field and how much you can expect to make as a controls engineer [Music] so to give you a little background before i dive into the list what qualifies me to even talk about this well i went to school to be a mechanical engineer immediately got into controls engineering out of college and i spent three years at a controls integrator which i'll talk about a little bit later and during a recent job hunt i had interviews with tesla spacex disney and a few other companies and so i have a pretty wide understanding of both the field as well as the job market for it right now so without any further ado let's get into the list number five what are the main duties of a controls engineer while the job description can vary wildly depending on the company the most basic thing that they have in common is automation engineers controls engineers control systems engineers are in charge of taking manual processes and finding ways to automate and optimize them this can typically be done by a combination of programming code in specific computers or plc's which stand for programmable logic controllers that are specifically designed to automate processes in factory settings as well as often robotic programming languages using six axis robotic arms by kuka abb fanuc or similar things like that to automate a variety of input and output devices which are considered i o devices and typically create some element of operator interaction via graphics this is referred to as the human machine interface or graphical user interface depending on your company some positions can be more hardware intensive specking devices building cabinets and actually wiring things while others may focus on the software side of things with more reporting sql type stuff data analytics and those sorts of things but typically an understanding of all of them just regardless of what your focus is will be expected at the job four what sort of education is required while there are a few schools that do have a control systems engineering degree nowadays the work is fairly niche and you may actually be better off even if you think you're interested in this sort of field taking some electives in the control systems direction and getting a more general engineering degree i really like electrical computer systems computer science and mechanical for getting into this field as long as you really steer your electives towards control systems if you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that that's what you want to do then go get that degree and that's totally fine but typically a company looking for control systems engineers is willing to hire mechanical electrical computer science software engineering and even depending on the industry if it's a chemical plant they might be willing to take on a chemical engineer as well things like that a lot of the times mechanicals are actually at the bottom end of consideration because you don't get exposed to as much software which is a pretty key part of the job so in general you want to take your electives and do kind of individual projects throughout school with a focus on control systems or any kind of automation and that will really help you in the job market because what degree you get is actually going to be less important in my experience some companies don't even have strict college or degree requirements and if you can really impress your interviewers with practical knowledge learned from years of work experience on the job or an internship where you really took on controls elements even though that's not really your forte you might be just fine three what does a typical automation project actually look like typically it's going to begin with an in-depth assessment of a current process that has a major flaw these would typically be like low quality the process is too slow it's dangerous there are safety concerns or it's just too expensive to produce product so you work with a cross-disciplinary engineering team you evaluate different approaches to optimize and automate a process and you weigh that against the risks costs potential benefits but once once a path forward is decided the controls engineer should expect to spend months sometimes even years writing plc code configuring automation hardware developing graphics going through multiple iterations of reviews and revisions until startup startups are intense you work long hours typically this will often include facility downtime so there will be corporate pressures that are really pushing down on you and so you need an ability to think on the fly work quickly problem solve in real time and roll with the punches it can be a very stressful field of engineering during these startup phases that being said it is super company dependent sometimes the job is actually a lot more r d sometimes it's more incremental improvements when i've been doing work in chemical facilities chemical plants it's always incremental improvement making minor changes but when i was interviewing with spacex they were essentially r d everything was experimental the goal was figure out how to optimize it but you had a little more flexibility on if things went sideways whereas a chemical plant that's up and running really can't risk being down for extended periods of time so you just kind of improve things as time allowed number two what sort of companies need controls and automation engineers and the short answer is everybody it might seem like niche work you probably don't hear about it that often because it's not that well known but if you start link looking into it on linkedin or indeed or any of these job share sites that is exactly why it's in such high demand because it's moderately niche but the entire world is moving towards automation everyone has an automation need a lot of software engineers or computer science majors aren't necessarily good enough or interested enough in the hands-on portions required by the job but a lot of mechanical electrical chemical engineers aren't skilled enough in code and software elements to be able to really be a well-rounded controls engineer this has led to hundreds of current needs with leading-edge tech companies tesla amazon google spacex disney even major defense and aerospace companies like lockheed and raytheon as well as integrators who are controls and automation contractors that basically come in and do large automation projects for companies who can't handle it with their own internal resources rockwell siemens as well as independent integrators like rovasys all do things where where they will just come in for a project on a contract but they'll do large scale automation and typically handle everything from cad and hardware design and panel design to checking it out during startup last thing i'm going to talk about is salaries and before i get into that be sure to leave a like on the video if you're enjoying it subscribe to the channel for tons more great content and let me know in the comments what you think of the video and if you have any questions or want to see something in particular in the future number one is it lucrative am i going to make money and i just want to start by saying this is frame of reference dependent as with almost all engineering you'll make a fine living the average salary for starting right out of college is around sixty five thousand dollars this puts it squarely in the middle of engineering fields and the average of five to ten years experience is around eighty five thousand dollars some places it might be a little lower some places it might be higher as with everything as you go to more expensive cost of living areas you can expect the salaries to increase from there as well so these are just kind of baselines to give you an idea of what you can expect but one thing i'll say as well with every field of engineering in particular controls those who really excel at it find the salaries to be consistently higher i mean 65 000 starting salary if you have an internship or some practical job experience right out of college you can expect to be beating that number pretty easily five to ten years is not how long it takes to get to eighty five thousand dollars if you're excelling wherever you're working integrators may actually have higher starting salaries right out of college often starting in the low to mid 70s while experienced controls engineers are most likely going to find their highest numbers when they go to a company that's not controls focused and is just looking for an internal controls resource this is mostly because integrators need people willing to work long hours and put in extra effort right out of college and so the learning curve is not as big a deal whereas an internal resource team might only have two or three controls engineers for a whole company and so they can't afford to be doing a lot of training so they will spend a little more to bring in experienced resources whereas integrators just really need hard workers and they're willing to incentivize that this being said typically if you are just interested in earning top dollar you should plan on shifting companies every three to five years all right so in summary automating stuff is awesome this field of engineering is growing we're entering the information age and the ever expanding internet of things as it's called you can do so many different things and work for so many different companies in the world of controls and automation engineering it is a great choice for stem folks trying to decide what they want to do but most importantly for any engineer learn to think on your feet learn to do critical problem solving and focus on developing your technical and personal skills and you'll excel in whatever you decide to go into and if you decide you want to make a career shift you'll have no problem doing it thanks for watching the video i hope you enjoyed it let me know in the comments if you had any questions or want to know more about anything else be sure to leave a like on the video subscribe to the channel for tons more great content and let me know what you want to see in the future thanks for watching bye [Music] you