USA or Europe
Head of Automation Value Engineering (Enterprise)
This role owns Cenotian's Enterprise Automation Programs and Value Engineering practice: a vendor-neutral service that converts operating objectives into decision-grade investment cases, market-procurable automation programs, issue-ready sourcing packages, qualified supplier fields, governed proof-of-concept deployments, and repeatable rollout designs.
Clients should finish an engagement knowing what to automate, why it matters, what the complete deployment should cost, how the work should be packaged, which suppliers can deliver it, what evidence will prove performance, how the first site becomes a repeatable rollout, and which governance conditions must be true before capital is committed.
Context
Cenotian is the market maker for robotics, restoring industrial sovereignty in the West. We provide capital and capabilities to support physical automation projects across the US and Europe. The engineers who build and install robots, machines, and systems face financial and operational constraints that prevent good projects from reaching the factory floor. Cenotian removes those constraints through financing, technical services, compliance infrastructure, and deployment support. Enterprise manufacturers face a coordination and capital-allocation problem. Automation opportunities sit across business units, sites, lines, and functions, while ownership is fragmented among operations, engineering, finance, procurement, IT, operational technology, safety, and transformation teams. Internal specialists often know individual plants or technologies but lack a common method to compare opportunities, structure programs around the available supplier market, define evidence, standardize requirements, and move approved cases through procurement and implementation. Vendor advice is shaped by what each supplier sells. Large consulting programs can define strategy without producing issue-ready work packages or carrying decisions into proof and rollout. Cenotian's practice fills that gap. It provides independent engagement diagnosis, business cases, automation roadmaps, program architecture, supplier-market design, technical sourcing, acceptance design, and rollout support. It must earn revenue on its own merits, create trusted relationships with enterprise sponsors and plant operators, and connect suitable projects to Cenotian's technical qualification, compliance, and capital capabilities without compromising the integrity of its advice.
Position overview
The Head of Automation Value Engineering (Enterprise) will build and lead Cenotian's enterprise practice from its first anchor accounts into a repeatable, profitable business. You will own the offer, engagement architecture, commercial model, delivery method, executive sponsor relationships, client recommendations, sourcing and acceptance methods, customer outcomes, partner network, and practice economics. This is a hands-on builder role. You will win the first enterprise engagements, diagnose where Cenotian should enter, lead a multidisciplinary delivery pod, shape the first business cases and program architectures, author the critical client deliverables, and establish the standards that future team members and partners will follow. You will carry direct accountability for enterprise pipeline, consulting revenue, gross margin, customer outcomes, and the conversion of suitable advisory work into productive automation deployments. Enterprise clients may enter with an undefined operating problem, an approved automation ambition, a live supplier proposal, a sourcing process that needs strengthening, or a program that has stalled. The Head determines which evidence and work are required next rather than forcing every client through a fixed sequence. Engagements are modular. Entry points may include an opportunity screen, plant diagnostic, business case, multi-site roadmap, program decomposition, work-package design, supplier qualification, issue-ready RFI, RFP, or RFQ, proposal review, procurement recovery, proof-of-concept governance, or rollout planning. Qualified system integrators retain responsibility for detailed engineering, certification, integration, installation, commissioning, and service. Clients retain capital, award, and milestone approval authority. Travel: frequent travel to factories, workshops, supplier sites, and client decision forums.
- Reports to:
- CEO / Head of Special Missions
- Location:
- USA or Europe
Key responsibilities
- 01
Diagnose and structure the enterprise mandate
- Begin with the need in front of the client: an operating problem, an approved automation ambition, a live supplier proposal, a sourcing decision, or a deployment program that is failing to progress.
- Establish the operating baseline across throughput, cycle time, labor, quality, scrap, safety, uptime, space, product mix, changeover, maintenance, working capital, and other relevant measures.
- Define the target operating outcome, program perimeter, assumptions, constraints, dependencies, and evidence required for the next decision.
- Map executive sponsors, economic buyers, technical authorities, plant owners, procurement, finance, IT, operational technology, cybersecurity, safety, legal, and frontline stakeholders.
- Define decision rights, governance forums, approval gates, escalation paths, and the boundary between Cenotian, the client, and delivery partners.
- Determine whether the next module should be economics, program architecture, supplier qualification, sourcing, technical evidence, proof-of-concept governance, or rollout recovery.
- Build a ranked enterprise roadmap where the client has multiple opportunities, distinguishing immediate deployments from enabling work such as process stabilization, controls upgrades, data capture, cybersecurity remediation, layout changes, or workforce preparation.
- 02
Decompose operating outcomes into automation jobs
- Break each operating outcome into the discrete functional jobs required to achieve it rather than treating the project as a single equipment purchase.
- Define the inputs, outputs, performance levels, interfaces, dependencies, constraints, enterprise standards, failure modes, and acceptance criteria for each job.
- Separate process functions such as sensing, inspection, handling, movement, manipulation, control, safety, security, data exchange, and operator interaction.
- Identify which jobs should become enterprise standards, which require application-specific engineering, and which should remain with regional or plant teams.
- Trace each job through its work package, supplier responsibility, required response, test evidence, and acceptance decision.
- Use the decomposition to expose technical gaps, hidden scope, sequencing risks, and multi-supplier dependencies before procurement begins.
- 03
Architect programs, work packages, and interfaces
- Group jobs into coherent, market-procurable work packages based on the capabilities credible suppliers can provide.
- Define package boundaries, interfaces, accountabilities, sequencing, acceptance logic, and applicability across sites.
- Decide which packages should be awarded to a lead integrator, specialist supplier, OEM, or coordinated group of providers at local, regional, or enterprise level.
- Ensure that early packages preserve the technical and commercial feasibility of later packages.
- Define open interfaces, data ownership, infrastructure capacity, documentation requirements, and access rights that protect future competition and prevent avoidable supplier lock-in.
- Compare alternative system concepts, automation depths, architectures, bills of materials, service models, and implementation sequences.
- Separate proof-of-concept scope, cost, and acceptance from the subsequent rollout scope, while defining how the first design becomes repeatable.
- Establish standard designs, site assumptions, permissible variations, and the governance process for deviations across a portfolio.
- 04
Build and qualify the supplier market
- Maintain a current capability map of system integrators, OEMs, technical specialists, simulation providers, and regional experts across relevant automation domains.
- Run structured market scans that progress from the broad supplier universe through geographic, technical, financial, and delivery filters to a credible bidder field.
- Assess suppliers against the application, work package, enterprise architecture, installed base, cybersecurity and data requirements, regional service coverage, operating environment, financial capacity, contracting maturity, and delivery risk.
- Conduct human quality assurance through reference checks, project-history review, management interviews, site visits, and examination of delivery evidence.
- Set evidence, safety, security, service, and performance standards for suppliers participating in consulting-led opportunities.
- Match suppliers to the required jobs, customer context, region, and delivery risk rather than to commercial preference.
- Maintain supplier scorecards using proposal quality, delivery performance, defects, acceptance evidence, support, and realized outcomes.
- Enforce explicit rules for conflicts, referral economics, disclosure, data use, and separation of advisory recommendations from financing and technical qualification decisions.
- 05
Author and execute enterprise sourcing processes
- Produce issue-ready RFI, RFP, and RFQ documents that translate operating outcomes and work packages into functional requirements the market can price and deliver.
- Author requirement matrices, scope documents, bidder instructions, interface specifications, pricing schedules, commercial schedules, evaluation criteria, acceptance frameworks, and response templates.
- Structure requirement-level pricing so optional items, external integrations, and deferred scope can be isolated without repricing the entire package.
- Separate proof-of-concept and rollout pricing, and require bidders to state the assumptions behind site-level and program-level figures.
- Manage bidder introductions, consolidated questions, clarification calls, site visits, follow-up, proposal submission, interviews, and final evaluation.
- Normalize supplier responses for technical, commercial, lifecycle, contractual, and delivery comparison.
- Align the sourcing process with procurement, legal, finance, IT, operational technology, cybersecurity, safety, corporate engineering, and plant operations.
- Surface exclusions, hidden scope, lifecycle costs, architecture conflicts, data restrictions, integration dependencies, and contract risks before supplier selection.
- Produce an evidence-based award recommendation with a complete evaluation rationale. Cenotian recommends and manages the process; the client decides.
- 06
Define proof, acceptance, and rollout
- Treat installation, commissioning, testing, demonstration, and proof of functionality as distinct obligations with distinct evidence.
- Define factory or bench acceptance, site acceptance, commissioning records, requirement-level test records, defect registers, closure evidence, and formal sign-off.
- Identify safety-critical functions and specify the required design evidence, standards, failure-mode analysis, safe degradation, certification, and live fault demonstrations.
- Require detailed design, as-built documentation, device inventories, interface records, credentials handover, training, operating manuals, recommended spares, and support proposals.
- Define the conditions under which a proof-of-concept site is accepted and a rollout decision can be made.
- Convert accepted proof-of-concept work into a standard design, rollout package, cost model, deployment sequence, and site-variation process.
- Support implementation governance, change control, supplier coordination, acceptance oversight, defect closure, and value assurance where required.
- Preserve the responsibility of qualified suppliers for detailed engineering, certification, installation, integration, commissioning, and service.
- 07
Build decision-grade economics and capital cases
- Translate plant-level evidence into the investment language, hurdle rates, governance process, and approval artifacts used by the enterprise.
- Build business cases covering total deployment cost, operating benefit, ramp profile, downside cases, payback, cash requirements, lifecycle cost, and financing alternatives.
- Compare the complete deployment cost with the operating gain rather than evaluating isolated equipment prices.
- Make assumptions, sensitivities, dependencies, and open points traceable to their evidence.
- Compare opportunities across sites and business units using consistent economic and technical criteria.
- Recommend whether to proceed, redesign, defer, or stop, and state the conditions required for the case to remain valid.
- Connect qualified opportunities to Cenotian's financing capabilities where appropriate while preserving independent advisory and underwriting decisions.
- 08
Win and grow enterprise engagements
- Define and launch productized, tightly scoped entry engagements that lead directly to a client decision or executable next step.
- Build the target account universe across enterprise manufacturers and multi-site industrial groups within selected regions and production verticals.
- Build account plans that identify the executive sponsor, economic buyer, technical authorities, procurement path, business-unit owners, and relevant plants.
- Win paid engagements through direct outreach, Cenotian relationships, strategic partners, integrator and OEM introductions, and industry networks.
- Lead discovery with corporate operations, manufacturing excellence, engineering, finance, procurement, IT, operational technology, cybersecurity, safety, business-unit leaders, plant teams, and frontline operators.
- Personally lead anchor engagements while coordinating the specialist pod required for each mandate.
- Convert successful work into references, repeat engagements, multi-site programs, rollout mandates, and qualified deployment and financing opportunities.
- 09
Productize the method and build the practice
- Convert each engagement into reusable diagnostics, business-case models, jobs-to-be-done taxonomies, work-package architectures, supplier-capability data, sourcing materials, evaluation models, acceptance protocols, benchmark ranges, rollout templates, and vertical playbooks.
- Establish controlled document issuance with requirement traceability, dependency closure, version control, internal quality review, client approval, and release checklists.
- Use code, simulation, and AI tooling to reduce analysis and authoring time while preserving expert judgment, evidence lineage, and traceability.
- Distinguish work that requires a site visit from evidence that customer teams or partners can capture remotely across a site portfolio.
- Build a structured record of applications, costs, benefits, implementation risks, supplier performance, defects, acceptance evidence, and realized outcomes by site, business unit, region, and production archetype.
- Make each subsequent site or use case within a production archetype faster, more consistent, and more profitable than the first.
- Own the practice economics, including enterprise pipeline, conversion, revenue, utilization, delivery cost, gross margin, account expansion, and repeat business.
- Define which capabilities belong in the core team and which should remain within the independent specialist and partner network.
- Recruit and develop the initial enterprise delivery pod, then expand only when demand and unit economics justify it.
- Set delivery standards, quality review, account governance, utilization expectations, and professional development for the practice.
- Protect leadership bandwidth by building an operating model that scales across accounts and regions without becoming founder-dependent.
You'll know it's working when
Enterprise sponsors fund the entry engagement and use the output in portfolio, capital, sourcing, and deployment decisions.
The time from client mandate to an approved, issue-ready sourcing package falls as the method and artifact library mature.
Every issued sourcing package has traceable requirements, defined acceptance evidence, closed internal dependencies, completed quality review, and client approval.
Each work package reaches a credible bidder field, and supplier responses are sufficiently complete and comparable to support a defensible award decision.
Weak opportunities stop before they consume customer capital or supplier engineering effort.
Strong opportunities progress into governed sourcing, qualified partners, financing where appropriate, and productive deployment.
Proof-of-concept sites are accepted against requirement-level evidence, recorded defects are closed, and the design becomes a controlled rollout template.
Multi-site programs use common designs, clear site assumptions, explicit variation governance, and comparable cost and performance data.
Corporate and plant stakeholders trust the practice to recommend redesign, delay, or no action when the evidence requires it.
Successful anchor engagements expand into repeat work, additional packages, multi-site roadmaps, and rollout programs.
Consulting revenue and gross margin become predictable while delivery quality remains high across accounts, sites, and regions.
Each engagement improves Cenotian's methods, benchmarks, supplier intelligence, acceptance standards, and future decision speed.
The practice operates with clear ownership and limited dependence on the founders.
Candidate profile
What we require
- A technically credible commercial and program builder who can launch this offering from zero, win complex enterprise manufacturing accounts, and carry an unclear automation mandate into a governed supplier decision and productive deployment.
- Zero-to-one builder: you have built a consulting offer, enterprise account, region, service line, customer segment, or operating capability from scratch, personally winning the first anchor commitments and delivering early work with limited resources.
- Enterprise demand creation: you have personally originated, sold, or secured internal sponsorship for a complex enterprise automation mandate before its scope, budget, and ownership were fully settled. You can build the executive coalition, technical confidence, and commercial momentum required to move from an initial problem to a funded program.
- Enterprise stakeholder leadership: you have aligned executive sponsors, business-unit leaders, plant operations, engineering, finance, procurement, IT, operational technology, cybersecurity, safety, and legal around a funded decision. You maintain momentum through enterprise governance and procurement cycles without losing site-level credibility.
- Artifact-level program ownership: you have personally authored or materially owned industrial requirements, work packages, RFI, RFP, or RFQ documents, pricing structures, evaluation models, award recommendations, acceptance protocols, or rollout packages.
- Technical program architecture: you can decompose an operating objective into functional jobs, group those jobs into supplier-executable packages, define package interfaces, and identify the evidence required to prove the outcome.
- Supplier-market and sourcing judgment: you understand how integrators scope, price, exclude, engineer, and deliver work. You can build a credible bidder field, run clarification and evaluation, normalize proposals, and identify hidden scope and delivery risk.
- Proof and rollout discipline: you have carried at least one automation or industrial technology program through proof of concept, acceptance, defect closure, and repeat deployment or multi-site rollout.
- Industrial and commercial depth: you bring at least 8 years across automation, manufacturing, system integration, industrial technology, corporate engineering, operational improvement, technical procurement, or specialist consulting.
- Clear and direct communication: you recommend redesign, delay, or no investment when warranted, and can present the same case credibly to a plant manager, technical authority, procurement lead, CFO, and executive committee.
- Professional English is required. Italian, Spanish, French or German is a bonus.
Nice to have
- An enterprise industrial network.
- Experience across multiple automation domains.
- Safety-critical systems.
- Simulation or digital-twin expertise.
- IT and operational-technology governance.
- Equipment-financing knowledge.
- Evidence of turning personal expertise into reusable tools and team standards.
Background paths
01The MBB Principal who sold and delivered industrial transformation
You built your career in MBB in their industrial, operations, or manufacturing practice and reached Principal / AP, or the commercially-involved end of Project Leader / EM. Senior clients trusted you with problems that had no clean owner, settled budget, or obvious answer.
You originated or materially expanded the work. You built the executive coalition, converted plant evidence into a funded mandate, and stayed close enough to implementation to know where the PowerPoint stopped being true. Your projects reached sourcing, supplier selection, deployment, or value realization.
The decisive evidence is a mandate you personally helped sell and then carried into operating reality. You can repeat that performance without the former firm's logo, research infrastructure, staffing bench, or senior partner opening the door.
Candidates who only delivered work that somebody else sold do not fit this path. Neither do generalist strategists whose industrial experience ended at the steering committee.
02The selling engineer who broke into enterprise
You helped a fast-growth automation technology company or ambitious OEM win its way into sophisticated enterprise operators. The company was growing too quickly for a mature playbook, so you built part of the playbook while carrying a number.
You were sent when a customer liked the technology but could not yet justify, buy, integrate, or scale it. You found the operating wedge, shaped the application, built the economics, navigated procurement and technical approval, and stayed after signature until the first deployment worked. The initial project became a site rollout, strategic account, vertical, region, or new solution category.
Your edge comes from living on both sides of the commitment. You know what convinces an enterprise buyer, what suppliers routinely hide, where application assumptions fail, and how a technically credible proposal survives procurement.
Pure presales support does not qualify. Neither does quota ownership followed by an immediate handoff to delivery. You must have created the opportunity, shaped the solution, helped close it, and lived with the consequences.
03The hyper-automated operator who built the rollout machine
You worked inside an operator where automation was part of the production system rather than an innovation showcase. Think Amazon, Ocado, Tesla, or an industrial operator with comparable deployment intensity.
Your remit extended beyond one advanced facility. You secured capital, selected technologies and suppliers, established standards, navigated internal procurement and technical governance, and carried proof-of-concept work into repeat deployment across a network. When automation crossed operations, engineering, finance, safety, IT, and procurement, you were one of the people expected to make the system move.
You know why apparently strong pilots die inside large organizations. You have seen enterprise standards create leverage, local exceptions destroy economics, suppliers overstate readiness, and internal stakeholders quietly prevent a rollout.
Now you want to take that operating judgment outside one company and build a client-facing business around it. The transition requires genuine commercial hunger. Internal influence is relevant evidence, and this role also requires winning external trust, pricing work, asking for the mandate, and creating revenue.
Running one automated site does not qualify. Neither does inheriting a mature rollout machine designed by someone else.
Organizational context
The Head of Automation Value Engineering (Enterprise) will work most closely with:
- Co-founder / CEO - manager after successful launch and replication across enterprise accounts and markets.
- Head of Special Missions - manager during launch, owner of the bet portfolio, and counterpart for gates, resources, and operating-model decisions.
- Head of Commercial / CCO - enterprise account selection, executive relationships, account plans, pipeline development, regional priorities, and progression into broader Cenotian services.
- Client Service Delivery - engagement cadence, stakeholder coordination, client communication, decision tracking, and delivery operations.
- SMG Principals, in particular Robotics Applications & Value Engineering - application methods, operating-problem decomposition, technical requirements, simulations, and reusable product capabilities.
- Technical Qualification Services - independent assessment of system-integrator capability, solution evidence, and execution risk. The Value Engineering practice shapes the opportunity and sourcing process; Technical Qualification provides independent technical judgment where required.
- CFO / Head of Finance and Underwriting - financing structures, economic evidence, risk criteria, and independent financing decisions.
- VP, Data and Head of Platform & Infrastructure - structured evidence, cross-site benchmarks, supplier-capability data, tooling, workflows, and transition of validated methods into repeatable services.
- System integrators, OEMs, and specialist partners - detailed engineering, certification, delivery, commissioning, service, and domain expertise.
- The Head owns engagement architecture, the client recommendation, program and work-package design, supplier-market strategy, sourcing execution, deliverable quality, acceptance and rollout design, consulting economics, and the practice team within approved guardrails. Technical qualification and financing approval remain independent. Qualified suppliers retain responsibility for detailed engineering, certification, installation, integration, commissioning, and service. The client retains capital approval, supplier award, milestone approval, and operating acceptance.
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