Job Description

SCADA Engineer (Ignition)

Location: San Antonio
Employment Type: Full-Time
Relocation Assistance: Available

Overview

An established oil & gas operator is seeking a SCADA Engineer (Ignition) to join its team in San Antonio. This role is centered on application development, platform support, and long-term ownership of the Ignition environment. The ideal candidate is a hands-on developer who enjoys building scalable industrial applications, supporting production systems, and driving continuous improvement of SCADA architecture across the organization.

This position plays a key role in modernizing visualization, data utilization, and automation capabilities that directly support field operations and business decision-making.

Key Responsibilities

Ignition Platform Ownership

• Serve as the technical owner of the Ignition platform (by Inductive Automation), ensuring performance, reliability, and security.

• Manage upgrades, patching, backups, redundancy, and disaster recovery strategies.

• Maintain gateway configurations, user roles, and access control.

Application Development & Configuration

• Design, develop, configure, and support Ignition projects, including:

  • Perspective and/or Vision visualization modules

  • Tag structures and UDT architectures

  • Alarm management, historian integration, and reporting tools

• Build scalable, reusable templates and intelligent UDT frameworks.

• Develop Python-based scripting to automate workflows and enhance system functionality.

Systems Integration & Communications

• Configure and validate industrial communications (e.g., OPC, Modbus, MQTT, Ethernet-based protocols).

• Support connectivity between SCADA, PLCs, databases, and operational systems.

• Collaborate with engineering and operations teams to resolve data flow, performance, or visualization issues.

Operational Support

• Troubleshoot application-level issues impacting production environments.

• Participate in system testing, validation, and post-deployment support.

• Identify opportunities to leverage automation, scripting, and visualization to improve operational efficiency.

Standards & Documentation

• Develop and maintain technical documentation, standards, and best practices.

• Promote structured development methodologies, clean code, and lifecycle management.

• Recommend enhancements to improve scalability, usability, and long-term maintainability.

Required Qualifications

• Associate degree (or equivalent technical education) with 5+ years of relevant SCADA experience.

• Proven hands-on experience developing and supporting Ignition-based SCADA systems (or similar modern SCADA platforms).

• Strong proficiency in Python scripting for industrial applications.

• Deep understanding of:

  • Ignition project structure and tag architecture

  • Data modeling and reusable template strategies

  • Alarm, historian, and reporting configuration

• Solid networking fundamentals and industrial cybersecurity awareness.

• Demonstrated troubleshooting and problem-solving skills in live production environments.

• Experience adhering to structured testing, documentation, and coding best practices.

Preferred Experience

• Ignition 8.x Certification (or higher).

• Experience with additional programming languages such as VBScript, Java, or C#.

• Familiarity with relational databases and SQL-based data structures.

• Experience integrating with PLC-based control systems; exposure to platforms from Rockwell Automation is a plus.

• Background supporting upgrades, redundancy architectures, and disaster recovery testing.

• Oil & gas or other process-industry experience strongly preferred.