Senior Automation & Controls Engineer

About the company

Lyka Pet Food delivers fresh, vet-formulated dog meals directly to consumers through a subscription service.

About this role

About Lyka: Lyka was founded in 2018 by Anna Podolsky , inspired by her dog, Lyka , who was suffering from chronic health issues despite being on “premium” kibble. Together with Gabriel Guedes (COO) and Dr. Matthew Muir (Integrative Veterinarian), they built Lyka from the ground up with one core belief: better food can radically improve a pet’s healthspan and quality of life . Lyka’s meals are vet-formulated and gently cooked from real food ingredients . Delivered via a flexible subscription model, Lyka meals have driven remarkable improvements for tens of thousands of customers, supporting gut health, reducing intolerances, improving energy and mobility, and even promoting hair growth. What began as home-cooked meals has since scaled into one of Australia’s fastest-growing consumer companies , a vertically integrated, tech-enabled brand that is transforming pet health nationwide. Lyka now operates from two offices, Sydney (HQ) and Melbourne , with three state-of-the-art food production facilities (two in Sydney, one in Melbourne) and a growing national footprint. At Lyka, we’re not just selling pet food, we’re pioneering a new standard of wellness for pets. With strong product-market fit, deep customer love, and a track record of rapid growth, we’re now entering our most ambitious chapter yet: building a generational brand and category-defining business with global impact. About the role This is a client-side technical authority role, not a build role. You won't be writing PLC code or configuring the WMS yourself, you'll be deciding whether what the automation vendor has built is good enough to accept, and you'll be the person both the vendor and Lyka's internal teams come to when something needs a definitive answer. You'll specify, review, test and accept the vendor's design from first principles through to steady-state operation, carrying the technical risk of the programme and translating it into terms the business can act on. What you will do You'll own the integration between the warehouse management system, mobile scanning and Lyka's own platform, writing and approving the interface specifications, deciding who owns which master data, and defining exactly what happens when a message fails. When the integrator and internal IT each say the failure belongs to the other, that call sits with you. You'll hold the vendor's control system design to account at real review depth: PLC and network architecture, panel schematics, motor control, power distribution, AS/NZS 3000 compliance, locking down the electrical and infrastructure decisions early enough that they never become programme risk. Identification and data quality at the physical layer will be yours to get right too: label and barcode design, print quality, scan read rates, dimension and weight capture, master data control, with read rates and data defects driven to target before go-live rather than fixed during ramp-up. You'll plan and run FAT, SAT and integration testing, writing test scripts against the functional design specification and withholding acceptance until contracted throughput, capacity and accuracy are actually proven, not promised. From there you'll take the system through cutover, ramp-up and hyper-care into steady state, protecting customer supply the entire way through. You'll administer the automation contract itself, proposal and drawing revision control, scope and price movement, variations, extensions of time, and you'll deliver the project against scope, cost and programme, directing engineering consultants on construction and installation while coordinating internal technical teams who don't report to you. Requirements What we expect from you You'll hold a degree in Electrical, Mechatronic, Control Systems, Automation or a related engineering discipline, backed by real experience delivering automated materials handling or automated process systems, ASRS, shuttle, conveyor and sortation, robotics or similar. You'll have demonstrated ownership of systems integration between plant control, warehouse management and enterprise business systems, industrial controls and electrical engineering knowledge at review depth, and commissioning and test management experience carried through to live operation. Machinery safety risk assessment and safety system validation experience, ideally against AS/NZS 4024 or equivalent, is essential, as is a track record managing vendors, contractors and cross-functional stakeholders without direct authority over them. Full Australian working rights are required, and this is an on-site role. Benefits Work in a fast-growing start-up, experiencing what goes on behind the scenes to sustain hyper-growth for a start-up with a physical product! Growth and Development, Lyka is growing extremely quickly, which means you will have the opportunity to experience different challenges every day and progressively acquire more responsibilities as our facility and team expand. We provide an annual L&D budget for you to continue your personal development. Work for a sustainability-focused company, we care about the health of our dogs and our planet. We’re proud to be Australia’s only carbon-negative and plastic-negative pet wellness company and we’re always looking at ways for us to improve sustainability practices. Be part of a diverse top-talent team, coming from widely different backgrounds and geographies. Up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave top-up Wellbeing assistance and tools to take care of your mental and physical wellbeing so you can do your best work Pupper parent support to care for your furry friends, flexible arrangements for new pets, pet-friendly offices, discounts, and financial allowance for dog training and care to help them live their best life! We are committed to building inclusive and diverse teams Lyka is an equal-opportunity employer devoted to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity and inclusion. We celebrate diversity, are devoted to creating a