Engineer — Automation - Entry Level

The opportunity

Sanibev Inc. is building the first genuinely automated draught beer line cleaning system — a self-cleaning keg coupler and faucet that clean a bar's beer lines in place on a schedule while the staff go about their night. Every bar in America cleans its lines manually or semi-manually, or pays someone to, or quietly skips it. We are replacing that with a machine.

The key components are designed and prototyped. The next steps involve testing, refining, and converting the prototypes into bar and restaurant ready and certified equipment.

This is a founding engineering role for someone early in their career who wants to build real hardware with their hands and watch it go into the world. You will work directly with the founder — who designed the system and remains its lead engineer — and take on more of the machine as fast as you can carry it. Within two years, the engineer who grows into this role owns the development lab.

Sanibev Inc. was founded by the team behind Taphandles Inc., a 27-year manufacturing organization with 300+ employees and a vertically integrated factory. When you need a part made, it gets made.

• Build, wire, and test — control panels from blank enclosures, pneumatic solenoid banks, sanitary fluid plumbing, sensors and instrumentation. Your hands, your wiring, your machine.
• Learn PLC control the real way — writing and refining cycle sequencing, dosing logic, fault handling, and safe‑state behavior on hardware that has to work. Claude is a working partner for code here; your job is understanding what the program should do and catching it when it misbehaves.
• Run the tests that settle questions — design an experiment, instrument it, log the data, report what actually happened.
• Document as you go — build logs, wiring diagrams, a version‑controlled repository. The machine has to be transferable.
• Grow toward certification work — NSF food equipment standards and UL 508A panel practice, learned on a system headed for both.

A fully instrumented development system running a complete, repeatable cycle end to end — logged, documented, and ready to iterate against. You will build it alongside the founder, and by the end of it you will know the machine as well as anyone alive.

• A degree or strong coursework in mechatronics, electrical, mechanical, or manufacturing engineering — or equivalent hands‑on training
• Evidence you build things nobody assigned you. FSAE or Baja, combat or competition robotics, a co‑op where you commissioned something real, a personal project that got completely out of hand — show us.
• Basic wiring competence and the desire to become excellent at it
• Comfort reading and editing code, and keeping it under version control
• The temperament this job actually rewards: self‑directed, persistent through the third failed approach, and energized by a problem nobody has solved yet

• Pneumatics or fluid power exposure
• PLC coursework or lab time on any platform
• Fusion 360 or Solid Works, 3D printing, shop skills
• Brewery, beverage, food processing, or draught systems interest of any kind

New graduates are genuinely welcome here. The job selects for what you have built and how you think, and the résumé line count matters far less than the photos on your phone.

• Base salary: $70,000 – $80,000, depending on demonstrated hands‑on capability
• Milestone bonuses. Development milestones carry substantial cash awards. This is a founding technical role and is compensated as one.
• Health coverage with the employee‑only premium paid in full by the Company; dental and vision available at your election
• 401(k) with Company match of up to 4%
• 10 days per year regular PTO, accrued monthly (and increasing annually by 1 day/year up to a maximum of 21 days/year), plus company holidays

Sanibev Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment.