Junior Automation & Controls Engineer

Junior Automation & Controls Engineer

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research

Geneva, Switzerland

What you'll do

Join the Automatic Control & Safety (ACS) section of the CERN Industrial Controls group (BE-ICS) and contribute to the control systems for the Primary Gas Systems (PGS) that supply detectors and installations across CERN’s Experimental Areas. A central activity is the migration of the LHC Primary Gas Systems to a dedicated Experimental Areas infrastructure, regrouping their development, maintenance and first-line support. You will work across the full control stack – from PLC logic and field instrumentation to WinCC OA supervision – using CERN’s model-driven Gas Control System (GCS) and UNICOS-CPC frameworks.

Your responsibilities

• Contribute to the migration of the LHC Primary Gas Systems, covering PLC and SCADA (WinCC OA) development and commissioning.
• Develop and configure gas-system control applications on Schneider M580 and Siemens S7-1500 PLCs.
• Contribute to the specification, I/O definition and instrumentation of primary and detector gas systems and to HMI, touch-panel and notification (email/SMS) development.
• Support factory and site acceptance testing (FAT/SAT), installation and commissioning in the experimental areas, together with documentation and first-line operational support.

Your profile

• Interest in industrial control systems and hands-on work with hardware, instrumentation and field installations.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work within a multidisciplinary team.
• Good communication skills in English, with the ability to document and present technical work clearly.
• Your studies focused on Automation, Control Engineering.

Your skills

• Some knowledge of PLC programming (IEC 61131-3) on Schneider and/or Siemens platforms, or willingness to learn.
• Familiarity with SCADA systems (WinCC OA an asset) and industrial communication protocols such as PROFIBUS, PROFINET, Modbus or Flowbus.
• Proficiency in a scripting or programming language such as Python.
• Interest in field instrumentation and gas/fluid systems.
• Knowledge of continuous integration (GitLab CI) or model-driven code generation an asset.
• Spoken and written English, with a commitment to learn French.