SCADA, Controls & Automation Engineer Jobs in Energy: Demand, Pay & Skills
Part of Plutarch’s ongoing analysis of skill demand in energy hiring — last updated 5 October 2026, based on 264 tracked postings.
As of 5 October 2026, Plutarch tracked 264 unique open SCADA, Controls & Automation Engineer postings at energy employers. 67 postings disclosed annual pay, with a United States median of USD 153,000.
Demand for SCADA, Controls and Automation Engineers is concentrated heavily in the United States, with Canada a distant second and smaller volumes across India, Poland and France. Titles skew toward senior-level and above, with a roughly even split between postings that give no level signal at all and those explicitly asking for senior, lead, principal, staff or manager experience. Junior-level openings are present but limited, and executive-level postings are rare, pointing to a market built around experienced individual contributors rather than entry-level pipelines or senior leadership.
Open postings
Where
- United States · 128
- Canada · 28
- India · 12
- Germany · 9
- United Kingdom · 9
- Other or not stated · 78
Seniority
- Early career · 10
- Level not stated in title · 136
- Senior, lead, staff or manager · 114
- Leadership · 4
Disclosed pay by country · annual
| Country | Lowest to highest employer midpoint | Median | Postings stating pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | USD 90,000–263,000 | USD 153,000 | 67 of 119 |
| Canada | CAD 64,000–206,000 | CAD 123,000 | 15 of 22 |
Directional, not conclusive. Each figure is the midpoint of a salary range an employer disclosed in a public job posting, derived from public market sources and rounded to the nearest thousand. Samples are small, so a country appears only when at least 5 open postings disclose annual pay. At these sample sizes, do not compare one role’s median against another’s — the difference between them is smaller than the error on either.
How many employers state pay
- United States · pay stated in 71 of 119 postings we could read
- Canada · pay stated in 17 of 22 postings we could read
- India · pay stated in 0 of 7 postings we could read
- Germany · pay stated in 0 of 9 postings we could read
- United Kingdom · pay stated in 2 of 9 postings we could read
Counted from the same open postings as above, leaving out postings whose text we could not read for pay. Pay disclosure tracks local pay-transparency law more closely than employer policy, so a low rate is not evidence that employers here pay less.
Who is hiring
| Employer | Open postings |
|---|---|
| Siemens Energy | 27 |
| Worley | 22 |
| Hatch | 21 |
| Baker Hughes | 15 |
| Valar Atomics | 13 |
| GE Vernova | 12 |
| ExxonMobil | 11 |
| Freeport-McMoRan | 7 |
| Crusoe | 6 |
| Fluence | 6 |
| Nordex | 6 |
| NextEra Energy | 5 |
| Other employers | 113 |
How these roles are titled
The titles employers use for this role, most repeated first. Titles shown without a count appeared once.
- Automation Engineer · 7 postings
- Instrumentation & Controls Engineer · 7 postings
- Controls Engineer · 5 postings
- Senior Controls Engineer · 4 postings
- Subsea Controls Engineer · 3 postings
- Control Systems Engineer · 2 postings
- Instrumentation & Control Engineer · 2 postings
- Principal Controls Engineer · 2 postings
- Process Control Engineer · 2 postings
- Scada Engineer · 2 postings
- Senior Automation and Controls Engineer · 2 postings
- Senior Automation Engineer · 2 postings
- Senior Process Controls Engineer · 2 postings
- Sr. Controls Engineer · 2 postings
- Staff Controls Engineer · 2 postings
What employers ask for
Skills and tools named in the text of 203 open postings we could read in full, most named first.
| Skill or tool | Postings naming it | Employers |
|---|---|---|
| SCADA | 87 of 203 | 35 |
| PLC programming | 68 of 203 | 26 |
| Cybersecurity | 56 of 203 | 26 |
| DCS | 37 of 203 | 10 |
| Python | 31 of 203 | 19 |
| Power systems / grid | 31 of 203 | 17 |
| P&IDs | 30 of 203 | 8 |
A skill counts when the posting names it anywhere — requirements, role description or the employer’s own introduction. A skill is shown only when at least 3 postings from at least two employers name it. Postings whose full text we did not read are left out of these counts rather than counted as asking for nothing.
Patterns in the job titles
- Process control, including advanced and applications-focused variants
- Instrumentation and controls engineering
- Automation engineering paired with controls responsibilities
SCADA, Controls & Automation Engineer job description template
An outline to start from. The requirements are the skills energy employers most often name for this role, with how often each is named — not a model's guess.
Already have a draft? Paste it for a hiring-feasibility brief and a sharpened version. For the credential line, see which credentials the law requires, and where.
What the postings suggest about filling this role
The heavy tilt toward senior, lead, principal, staff and manager titles alongside a large share of unspecified-level postings suggests employers are mainly competing for experienced controls and automation talent, which tends to be harder sourcing territory given thin junior representation to grow into these roles. Concentration of demand in the United States with secondary competition in Canada means candidate pools may be stretched thinner in regions outside these two markets, moderately increasing difficulty elsewhere.
Read from employer demand only. These sources show what employers advertise, not how many people are available to hire, so this is a reading of the vacancies rather than a measure of scarcity.
Show these figures on your own website or newsletter
For recruitment agencies, careers sites, hiring blogs and newsletters: add a small card that shows how many SCADA, Controls & Automation Engineer roles energy employers have open and the skills they ask for most. It is useful beside a job advert or a market update, to show candidates and clients the demand. The card updates itself each week, and it names Plutarch as the source.
To add it, paste this code into your page's HTML, or send it to whoever manages your website.
Grade a job description — free, no sign-up
Paste a job description. We point out wording that may mislead candidates, whether it needs a credential, and how it compares with what energy employers ask for.Open the full grader.
This page describes the market. Your role is one job description.
Paste it to get a hiring-feasibility brief: whether the role can be filled, at what price, and who else could do it — every figure labelled by what it rests on.
Check your role — two briefs freeCounts are unique open postings seen in the last three weeks, taken from the named employers’ own published job postings; a vacancy posted in several places is counted once. Employers are named because they published these postings publicly themselves. The written summary is AI-generated from those postings and contains no figures and no employer names. Posting figures are direct counts; pay figures are the median and range of the salaries those employers disclosed. Terms of use.