Senior Controls

Opportunity MERLIN Edged is seeking a Senior Controls & BMS Engineer to provide technical ownership and engineering governance for the controls, automation and critical monitoring ecosystem across its Iberian data centers. The role combines deep technical expertise with lifecycle management, commissioning support, operational troubleshooting, standardisation and continuous improvement. This is a senior Subject Matter Expert position. It does not replace site Operations or specialist maintenance providers. It establishes the technical standards, improvements, troubleshooting, assurance and escalation capability required to keep controls systems reliable, resilient, secure and scalable. Role purpose
• Ensure that FMS, BMS, EMS/EPMS, SCADA, PLCs, historians, OT networks, field instrumentation and third-party integrations are correctly designed, commissioned, operated, maintained, secured and improved throughout their lifecycle. Key Responsabilities: Controls systems technical ownership
• Act as the technical Subject Matter Expert for FMS, BMS, EMS/EPMS, SCADA, PLCs/controllers, remote I/O, historians, engineering workstations, HMI, sensors, gateways, OT networks and associated integrations.
• Maintain a clear technical boundary between Owner governance, site Operations responsibilities and vendor or OEM execution.
• Provide authoritative technical advice during design, delivery, operation, incidents and lifecycle planning. Architecture and engineering standards
• Define and maintain Iberian controls and automation standards, reference architectures and minimum technical requirements.
• Review system topology, redundancy, communications, integration, maintainability and scalability.
• Identify single points of failure, common-mode dependencies and unsupported or weakly recoverable architectures.
• Review vendor proposals, technical submittals and deviations from corporate standards. Sequence of Operations and control logic
• Own engineering governance of Sequences of Operations, control narratives, interlocks, permissives, fail-safe states, recovery behaviour and automatic/manual modes.
• Review PLC/controller logic, lead-lag strategies, equipment rotation, setpoints and control-loop stability.
• Ensure production logic changes follow formal Management of Change, validation, approval and rollback requirements.
• Control the use and closure of temporary overrides, forced points and bypassed logic. Alarm management
• Define and maintain the alarm-management philosophy across FMS, BMS and SCADA.
• Lead alarm rationalisation, priority classification, deadband and delay review, nuisance alarm reduction and alarm-flood analysis.
• Identify missing, duplicated, suppressed, disabled or ineffective alarms and ensure corrective actions are closed.
• Establish an auditable alarm lifecycle from detection and escalation through resolution and verification. Reliability and resilience
• Assess controller, server, gateway, network, sensor and supervisory-system failure scenarios.
• Verify manual fallback, degraded-mode operation, failover, backup, restore and recovery arrangements.
• Ensure a supervisory or communications failure does not unnecessarily propagate into loss of critical infrastructure functionality.
• Develop risk-based remediation plans and provide technical input to CAPEX prioritisation. Troubleshooting and incident support
• Provide advanced support for complex controls incidents, including PLC, BMS/FMS/SCADA, communications, sensor, historian and control-loop failures.
• Use trends, alarms, event logs and configuration data to diagnose faults and distinguish symptoms from root causes.
• Lead or support RCA, FMEA, fault-tree analysis and corrective/preventive actions.
• Support Operations during critical incidents and define safe temporary workarounds where necessary. Data, trending and predictive diagnostics
• Use historian and controls data to detect abnormal behaviour, sensor drift, unstable loops, short cycling, runtime imbalance and energy deviation.
• Develop condition-based and predictive-maintenance use cases.
• Support justified integration with DCIM, analytics and other operational platforms while maintaining approved access boundaries. Commissioning and operational readiness
• Review controls design, points lists, cause-and-effect matrices, graphics and commissioning plans.
• Support point-to-point tests, functional performance tests, Sequence-of-Operations tests and Integrated Systems Testing.
• Verify alarm behaviour, failover, network-failure response, backup/restore and final configuration baselines.
• Ensure unresolved controls deficiencies are visible, risk assessed and formally managed before operational acceptance. Management of Change and configuration control
• Technically review changes to logic, sequences, setpoints, alarms, graphics, controllers, networks, gateways, firmware, software, servers, historians and integrations.
• Confirm that approved changes include risk assessment, MOP, backup, test plan, hold points, rollback plan and post-change verification.
• Maintain controlled as-built baselines, software and firmware registers, backups and configuration records. OT networks and cybersecurity
• Work with IT/OT and cybersecurity teams on segmentation, asset inventory, privilege management, remote access, patching, vulnerability remediation and secure vendor access.
• Assess the operational implications of cybersecurity actions before deployment in live critical environments.
• Maintain working knowledge of BACnet/IP, BACnet MS/TP, Modbus TCP/RTU, SNMP, OPC UA/OPC and other relevant industrial protocols. Lifecycle, vendors and capability
• Maintain visibility of hardware, software, operating-system, controller, sensor, gateway, licensing and vendor-support lifecycles.
• Develop multi-year obsolescence and technology-refresh plans.
• Define technical scopes, evaluate tenders and challenge OEM/vendor RCA, maintenance quality and lifecycle proposals.
• Develop controls capability through training, drills, diagnostic procedures, workshops and mentoring. Essential education and experience
• Degree or equivalent technical qualification in Industrial Automation, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Controls Engineering, Telecommunications, Mechatronics or a related discipline.
• Typically seven or more years of relevant controls and automation experience, preferably in data centers or other mission-critical environments.
• Strong knowledge of BMS, FMS, SCADA, PLC and industrial automation architectures.
• Demonstrable hands-on troubleshooting capability across controllers, communications, sensors, software and supervisory systems.
• Strong understanding of HVAC controls and critical mechanical systems, with working knowledge of electrical monitoring and EPMS architectures.
• Experience with PLC/controller programming, industrial protocols, functional testing and controls commissioning.
• Ability to interpret schematics, P&IDs, controls diagrams, points lists, cause-and-effect matrices and Sequences of Operations.
• Experience analysing trends, alarms, historian data and recurrent failure patterns.
• Experience working safely on live critical infrastructure and under formal change-control processes.
• Professional English. Spanish is required or strongly preferred for effective Iberian site coordination.
• Fluent Portuguese and professional English. Desirable
• Data centers, semiconductor facilities, pharmaceutical sites, utilities, process industries or other high-availability infrastructure.
• Platforms from Schneider Electric, Siemens, Johnson Controls, Honeywell, Rockwell Automation, Beckhoff, ABB, AVEVA, Tridium Niagara or Ignition.
• Industrial cybersecurity, DCIM integration, Integrated Systems Testing and predictive analytics.
• Technical tendering, vendor governance, service contracts and CAPEX business cases. Specific Skills / Abilities
• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Process and workflow development
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• Experience or ability working in an international environment
• Good problem-solving and analytical skills
• Ability to manage multi-projects around Iberian Peninsula
• Logical, considered a professional, with an ability to work collaboratively with a varied stakeholder group
• Passionate about what you do and committed to excellence
• Detail oriented and diligent
• Entrepreneurial by nature with a strong sense of ownership
• Process minded with a strong cost focus
• Results oriented and prepared to take ownership of outcomes
• Support the success of other people and their businesses above your own
• Fluent in Spanish
• Excellent external radar, keen to picking up on trends Working conditions
• Site-based role with regular presence in plant rooms, electrical rooms, technical spaces and active work areas.
• Participation in the site on-call and escalation model, as applicable.
• Availability for planned out-of-hours maintenance, switching, testing and emergency response.
• Occasional travel to suppliers, factories and other regional data center locations.
• All activity is subject to site safety, security, access-control and confidentiality requirements. About MERLIN Edged MERLIN Properties and Edged Energy joined forces in 2020 to promote, build, equip and operate state-of-the-art, carbon-neutral data centers in the Iberian Peninsula. Their facilities are located in Barcelona, Madrid, Extremadura, Lisbon and the Basque Country. MERLIN Edged is creating a global network of carbon-neutral, waterless infrastructure for data center and microgrid projects. MERLIN Edged is an infrastructure solution that combines rapid deployment with sustainable operation. Its modular components, including waterless cooling and advanced electrical systems, help reduce costs, minimize environmental impact, and enable a new generation of on-demand infrastructure as a service. Position: Senior Controls & BMS Engineer. Full-time / part-time: Full-time

Location:
Getafe, Madrid.