Automation Engineering Team Lead

This position is based in North Canton, Ohio. Candidates should reside within a reasonable commuting distance of our North Canton office to support business needs.

Lead the vision, governance, design, and delivery of AI agent and intelligent automation solutions across the enterprise. The primary mission of this role is to build and scale Microsoft Copilot Studio agents, establish enterprise AI governance, and enable business units through automation, while also stabilizing and operating the existing UiPath RPA portfolio as a foundational capability. Technologies span Copilot Studio, Power Platform, UiPath, and generative/agentic AI tooling.

• Define and own the automation engineering vision, roadmap, and quarterly OKRs in alignment with enterprise strategy and the Director of Software Engineering's priorities.
• Lead scope-of-ownership decisions — determining what lands on this team and what doesn't — including Microsoft Copilot & Copilot Studio agent development, UiPath RPA build/support/roadmap, generative AI tool governance (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.), agentic & developer AI tools (Claude Code, Git Hub Copilot, Cowork), AI/automation policy/intake/approval workflows, and vendor evaluation & licensing decisions for AI/automation.
• Conduct process discovery workshops, assess automation feasibility, and maintain a prioritized intake backlog aligned to PMO governance and business unit demand.
• Drive capacity to meet Copilot demand and scale to all business units; establish defensible governance for generative AI before exposure escalates; and revive UiPath ROI through dedicated ownership and roadmap.

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Studio agents for business units (Finance, Logistics, Safety, Fleet Services, and shared services) using a standard intake and delivery process.
• Oversee the agent development lifecycle: discovery, scoping, build, test, deploy, and iterate — ensuring agents meet quality, security, and supportability standards.
• Evaluate and pilot emerging AI capabilities (generative AI models, agentic frameworks) and make build-vs-buy recommendations.

• Assume immediate operational ownership of existing UiPath automation portfolio, ensuring continuity, stability, and incident response as the team transitions from external managed support to internal ownership.
• Own end-to-end RPA delivery lifecycle: discovery, design, development, testing, deployment, and support.
• Architect scalable UiPath solutions using REFramework or equivalent automation delivery frameworks, queues, triggers, and secure credential management.
• Develop and maintain automations using UiPath Studio/StudioX and Orchestrator, and Power Platform; perform peer code reviews.
• Integrate UiPath with enterprise systems (ERP, TMS, APIs) and Microsoft ecosystem (Azure AD, Azure Dev Ops, SQL Server).
• Oversee RPA deployment including creation of CI/CD pipelines and creation of production Change Requests. Facilitate smooth transition to automated processes.

• Own policy, approval, and oversight for generative and agentic AI tools — from evaluation through deployment.
• Draft and ratify the enterprise generative & agentic AI governance policy; manage ongoing compliance, risk assessment, and tool approval workflows.
• Ensure 100% of business-unit Copilot agent requests are handled by a defined intake process and that a ratified enterprise generative & agentic AI governance policy is in force.

• Manage delivery across the team, including a Senior Automation Engineer and Junior Automation Engineer.
• Actively enhance the skills and performance of other engineers through dedicated mentoring, sponsorship, and providing constructive feedback. Their influence extends beyond their immediate team, contributing to the betterment of the automation function at large.
• Help shape and select the rest of the team; participate actively in hiring, scoring candidates, and debrief discussions.
• Manage the automation backlog, sprint…