Automation Manager

Position Title: Automation Team Manager
Department: PUMA Works
Reports to: Director of PUMA Works
Direct Reports: Automation programmers, project coordinator, and support staff assigned to the automation team
Compensation: Salary starting range $80,000 - $130,000; Commensurate with Skills and Experience
Hours: Full-time Monday - Friday, 8:30am - 5:00pm, 40 hours per week; plus on-call rotation
Benefits

Three weeks of paid vacation
Paid sick time
Eight & a half paid holidays per year
Two paid flexible holidays per year
ICHRA Health Insurance Reimbursement
100% Employer Paid Dental & Vision Insurance
100% Employer Paid Life Insurance
100% Employer Paid Medical Clinic Membership or Cash Equivalent (for Field Staff) for employees and dependents
Other benefits accrue over the first 3-24 months, including: additional paid vacation, 401k with company matching, and quarterly profit share.

Place of Work: Tech Hub - Redding, CA.

Company Overview
Maas Energy Works (MEW) is the leading developer and operator of on-farm, waste-to-energy systems in the United States. The Company designs, develops, constructs, and operates biogas renewable energy generation systems, primarily on dairy farms. Our projects include anaerobic digesters, biogas-powered electric generation, and renewable natural gas upgrading.
Position Description
MEW is hiring an Automation Team Manager to lead the people and the workflow of our automation and programming team. This is a people-first leadership role. You will grow the careers of a team of PLC and SCADA programmers, balance their workloads, and keep programming tickets and projects moving to completion across a portfolio of digester and RNG facilities.
You will bring enough technical depth to sit in a troubleshooting conversation and contribute to solving the problem - but you will not set the team's technical direction. That responsibility belongs to the Technical Lead.
The ideal candidate has developed technical people before, holds a team accountable without micromanaging it, and takes satisfaction in removing obstacles so engineers can do their best work.

Scope of the Role - What This Role Owns and What It Does Not
This position pairs with a Technical Lead. Both roles report to the Director of PUMA Works as co-leads of the automation team. The division of responsibility is deliberate and explicit:

This role owns: people development, performance management, hiring, work assignment and loading, capacity planning, ticket and project throughput, scheduling, on-call rotation, timesheet and PTO approval, cross-department coordination, and escalation.
The Technical Lead owns: technical direction, architecture and platform decisions, programming standards and conventions, code and configuration review, and the technical approach taken on any given project or ticket.

The Automation Team Manager does not direct the team on technical strategy, override technical decisions, or serve as the final technical authority. When technical and delivery priorities conflict, the Manager and the Technical Lead resolve it together and escalate to the Director when they cannot.
Responsibilities
People Leadership and Development

Manage, coach, and develop a team of automation programmers
Hold consistent one-on-one meetings focused on growth, obstacles, and career direction
Build individual development plans and identify training, certification, and stretch-assignment opportunities for each team member
Write and deliver performance reviews; set clear expectations and address performance issues early and directly
Build a team culture that reflects MEW's values - trustworthy, effective, generous, fulfilled, innovative

Work Loading and Capacity

Assign programming tickets and project work across the team based on skill, development goals, and available capacity
Maintain a clear view of who is working on what, and rebalance when priorities shift
Forecast capacity against the incoming project pipeline and flag staffing gaps to the Director
Coordinate with Project Management, Operations, Engineering, and Construction to sequence automation work against site schedules and commissioning dates

Delivery and Ticket Flow

Own the health of the team's ticket queue in ClickUp - keep work visible, current, and moving
Run recurring stand-ups and work-review meetings; identify stalled tickets and clear the blockers behind them
Track project milestones and communicate status, risk, and schedule changes to stakeholders
Partner with the Technical Lead to confirm work is scoped and sized realistically before it is committed
Escalate resource conflicts, scope changes, and schedule risks to the Director early
Report on team throughput, backlog, and delivery performance

Administration and Operations

Review and approve timesheets, expenses, and PTO requests
Build and manage team scheduling, including site travel and the on-call rotation
Verify the team maintains program backups and site documentation to standard
Support process improvement in how the team intakes, tracks, and closes work
Contribute to team budget planning and software, hardware, and licensing needs

Technical Contribution

Participate in troubleshooting and problem-solving sessions, contributing practical judgment and experience
Perform automation and programming work where needed
Understand the team's work well enough to size it, assess progress honestly, and hold credible technical conversations with team members and stakeholders
Translate between technical staff and non-technical stakeholders across the company
Defer to the Technical Lead on technical direction, standards, and final technical decisions

Qualifications & Skills
Required

3+ years managing or supervising technical staff - engineers, programmers, controls technicians, or a comparable team
Demonstrated record of developing people: coaching, performance conversations, career growth, and retention
Working technical background in industrial automation, controls, engineering, IT, or a closely related technical field - enough to follow the work, size it, and contribute in a troubleshooting discussion
Experience managing a work queue or project portfolio and driving it to completion
Strong organizational skills with the ability to track many parallel workstreams
Excellent written and verbal communication; can adapt the message for a programmer, an operations manager, and a dairy owner
Comfortable with task and project tracking systems (ClickUp or equivalent)
Sound judgment on when to decide, when to delegate, and when to escalate
Must be proficient in English.

Preferred

Hands-on experience with PLC programming (Allen-Bradley, Studio 5000) or SCADA/HMI platforms (Ignition, Aveva, Wonderware, C-more, Automation Direct)
Familiarity with industrial networking, VFDs, instrumentation, 4-20mA and 24V control, Modbus485, and Modbus TCP
Experience in renewable energy, agriculture, manufacturing, utilities, or another field-service environment
Background supporting geographically distributed sites and remote team members
Working knowledge of electrical systems and safe work practices

Other Duties
Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive list of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.

Physical Demand Requirements
Work Environment - Office Staff
This job partially operates in a professional office environment. The role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets, and fax machines.
Physical Demands - Office Staff / Travel
This is largely a sedentary role with some travel required. This would require the ability to walk up and down stairs, and to enter, travel in, and exit vehicles and airplanes. Travel is required occasionally to project sites and regional offices. Site visits may involve walking on uneven ground and exposure to outdoor conditions and operating equipment.