Automation Engineer

Automation Engineer – Beckhoff TwinCAT

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Salary: CHF 100,000-120,000 + equity, depending on experience

Working model: Predominantly onsite

Visa: Sponsorship and international relocation support available

Language: English required; German is not essential

We are partnering with an early-stage Swiss deep-tech company developing a new generation of high-precision robotic manufacturing equipment for the semiconductor, quantum and advanced electronics industries.

Their technology uses highly precise automation to integrate advanced materials onto semiconductor wafers, helping take processes that have traditionally been difficult to scale beyond the laboratory towards repeatable industrial production.

Having successfully validated the technology with customers, the team is now moving towards commercial deployment of complete machines that customers can operate within their own cleanroom environments.

They are now hiring an Automation Engineer – Beckhoff TwinCAT to become the first dedicated internal owner of their PLC and machine-control software.

The role

This is not a conventional PLC maintenance position.

You will take ownership of an existing object-oriented TwinCAT platform and help develop it into a reliable, modular machine-control system that can scale across new hardware, future machines and customer deployments.

Working closely with the founders and engineers across hardware, software and physics, you will be responsible for areas including:

• Developing and extending Beckhoff TwinCAT 3 machine-control software
• Building clean, modular and object-oriented PLC architectures
• Developing machine logic and HMI functionality
• Integrating hardware through EtherCAT
• Controlling and integrating motion systems, sensors, actuators, cameras and other machine components
• Commissioning and debugging physical equipment
• Troubleshooting issues across software, electronics and hardware
• Supporting new machine modules, upgrades and customer installations
• Improving testing, diagnostics, reliability and maintainability as the platform moves from prototype to commercial equipment

What we are looking for

The priority is someone who combines strong automation experience with good software-engineering fundamentals. You should have:

• Strong hands-on experience (2+ years) with Beckhoff TwinCAT 3
• Experience writing structured, object-oriented PLC software rather than purely procedural machine logic
• Strong experience with Structured Text, HMI development and EtherCAT
• Practical experience commissioning and debugging real industrial machinery
• Experience integrating sensors, actuators, servo drives, motion systems or other industrial hardware
• The ability to diagnose problems across software and physical machinery
• Confidence taking technical ownership without requiring a large automation team around you

Extra points if you have experience with

• Semiconductor equipment, microelectronics assembly, precision automation, robotics, machine vision, metrology or other high-accuracy machinery
• C#, C++, C or Python experience within industrial systems is also valuable.

Why you should consider this?

You would be joining at an important point in the company's development: the underlying technology has been proven, customer demand is developing, and the engineering challenge is now moving towards building machines that can operate reliably outside the lab.

Rather than becoming one engineer within a large controls department, you will become the internal owner of the automation platform, with significant influence over how the machine-control architecture develops.

As the company grows, there is also scope for this position to develop into broader technical leadership and potentially build an automation function around you.

If you have strong Beckhoff/TwinCAT experience and enjoy seeing your software directly control complex physical machinery, apply or get in touch for more information.