Senior Project Automation & Control Engineer

Senior Control and Instrumentation Engineer

Location:

Nottingham, England, United Kingdom

This range is provided by  - More Years Together. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

From a bold idea to revolutionising dog food, Years has grown into a fast‑scaling business dedicated to helping dogs live longer, healthier lives. In just 3 years, we've built a great start‑up business, serving thousands of happy customers, all while striving to achieve our mission. Our goal? To give dog owners a better, fresher, and healthier way to feed their pets.

We provide human cut, personalised meals designed to support each dog's unique needs, delivered straight to their door – no preservatives, no compromises, just real nutrition. You can find our customers across the UK, with future ambitions to scale internationally and continue transforming how people care for their dogs.

Years is entering a new phase of automation — where ideas turn into machines, and engineering vision becomes production reality. This role is built for a rare type of engineer: a hands‑on doer who can take a verbal idea, sketch it, design it, spec it, fabricate it, wire it, program it, and commission it into a fully functioning automation system. You'll be the driving force behind Years' next‑generation automation systems.

From inline washers to precision dosing rigs, from control panels to sensor networks, you will architect and physically build smart automation that increases uptime, reduces operator load, and scales our production capability.

The Engineering team exists to build the automation and production technology that enables Years to scale reliably, safely, and efficiently. As we move from startup to high‑volume manufacturing, the team's mission is to create robust, repeatable systems that increase throughput and reduce operator dependency. The key challenge is speed: we must design, fabricate, and deploy new automation faster than traditional suppliers can, while ensuring food‑safe engineering, uptime, and long‑term maintainability.

The immediate priority is delivering practical, working automation that solves real production problems — from inline washers and conveyors to jigs, controls, dosing rigs, and sensor‑driven systems. Longer‑term, the focus shifts to standardising our automation architecture, improving line reliability, and building modular systems that scale with our growth. The role balances rapid hands‑on execution with strategic input into the automation roadmap, component standards, and future investment decisions.

This role reports to the Engineering Manager with a dotted line to the R&D director and will become a key technical authority within the team. While primarily hands‑on, it involves guiding best practices in automation, influencing design decisions, and supporting junior members when needed.

You’ll work closely with Production, Maintenance, Technical/QA, NPD, and Operations to understand challenges, test ideas, and deploy new systems into the live environment. Collaboration will range from scoping functional requirements, integrating automation with existing kit, supporting operator training, and coordinating line trials — ensuring every system you build is practical, safe, and fit for the realities of daily production.

This is a heavily execution‑focused role, with the majority of time spent designing, fabricating, wiring, programming, and commissioning automation. Strategic input is still important — especially in selecting platforms, shaping standards, and advising on long‑term scalability — but the core expectation is delivery: taking ideas, engineering them, and physically making them real.

• Turn verbal concepts into engineered automation solutions (sketch → design → build → commission)
• Design mechanical components including frames, brackets, guards, housings, jigs and assemblies
• Specify sensors, actuators, pneumatics, hydraulics, control hardware, safety devices and…