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Cenotian
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USA or Europe

Head of Automation Value Engineering (SMBs)

This role owns Cenotian's automation Value Engineering services for small and mid-sized manufacturers: a vendor-neutral service that identifies which production problems merit automation, proves the economics, and carries clients from an initial diagnostic to a decision-ready deployment plan.

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Clients should finish an engagement knowing what to automate, why it matters, what evidence supports the case, what the project should cost, who can deliver it, and which conditions must be true before they commit capital.

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. Small and mid-sized manufacturers face an earlier problem. Many know that labor scarcity, throughput limits, quality losses, or unsafe work justify change, yet they lack the internal resources to identify the right automation opportunity and build a credible case. Advice often comes from a party with hardware or integration revenue at stake. Public programs can diagnose a need, then stop before implementation. Large consultancies rarely serve this segment economically. Cenotian Consulting will fill that gap. The practice will provide independent automation diagnostics, value engineering, project scoping, partner selection, and implementation support. It must earn revenue on its own merits, create trusted customer relationships, and generate qualified deployment and financing opportunities without compromising the integrity of its advice.

Position overview

The Head of Automation Value Engineering (SMBs) will build and lead Cenotian's automation consulting offering from its first paid engagements into a repeatable, profitable practice. You will own the offer, commercial model, delivery method, customer outcomes, partner network, and consulting economics. This is a hands-on builder role. You will sell the first engagements, conduct site diagnostics, write the first recommendations, develop the tools, and establish the standards that future team members and partners will follow. You will carry direct accountability for consulting revenue, gross margin, customer outcomes, and the conversion of suitable advisory work into live automation deployments. The practice begins with productized, fixed-fee entry offers such as automation-readiness diagnostics, process and ROI assessments, and scoped deployment roadmaps. Strong engagements may progress into quote sourcing, partner selection, financing, and implementation support. Qualified system integrators retain responsibility for detailed engineering, integration, commissioning, and service. Travel: frequent travel to factories, workshops, and partner sites.

Reports to:
CEO / Head of Special Missions
Location:
USA or Europe

Key responsibilities

  1. 01

    Build decision-grade business cases for specific automation opportunities

    • Start with a defined production problem or opportunity and determine whether automation is the right response.
    • Establish the operating baseline across throughput, cycle time, labor, quality, scrap, safety, uptime, space, product mix, changeover, maintenance, and working capital.
    • Define the target operating outcome, scope boundaries, assumptions, constraints, and evidence required to assess the opportunity.
    • Build decision-grade business cases covering total project cost, operating benefit, ramp profile, downside cases, payback, cash requirements, and financing alternatives.
    • Recommend whether to proceed, redesign, defer, or stop, and state the conditions required for the case to remain valid.
  2. 02

    Build automation roadmaps for manufacturers

    • Identify and rank automation opportunities across a plant, production line, or site portfolio by economic value, technical feasibility, implementation difficulty, organizational readiness, dependencies, and time to impact.
    • Convert the ranked opportunities into a sequenced automation roadmap with stage gates, investment needs, capability requirements, and decision points.
    • Distinguish immediate opportunities from enabling work such as data capture, process stabilization, layout changes, controls upgrades, or workforce preparation.
    • Link each roadmap item to a specific business case, responsible owner, evidence requirement, and next action.
    • Revisit the roadmap as operating conditions, supplier options, and realized outcomes change.
  3. 03

    Decompose each opportunity into granular automation jobs to be done

    • Break each opportunity into the discrete functional jobs required to deliver the operating outcome rather than treating the project as a single equipment purchase.
    • Define the required inputs, outputs, performance levels, interfaces, dependencies, constraints, 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 can be standardized, which require application-specific engineering, and which should remain with the manufacturer.
    • Use this decomposition to expose technical gaps, hidden scope, sequencing risks, and multi-supplier dependencies before procurement begins.
  4. 04

    Map jobs to market capabilities and solution options

    • Maintain a current view of relevant automation capabilities and suppliers across low-voltage and electronic-security systems, industrial controls, machine and computer vision, robotics, safety, sensors, material handling, production software, and related domains.
    • Match each job to the capability class, technology approach, supplier type, and evidence required to perform it.
    • Compare alternative system concepts, automation depths, architectures, bills of materials, service models, and implementation sequences.
    • Assess capability fit against the application, customer, region, installed base, operating environment, and delivery risk.
    • Identify when available market capabilities are insufficient, overengineered, or uneconomic for the opportunity.
  5. 05

    Design supplier work packages and lead RFQ and procurement

    • Bundle the granular jobs into coherent, achievable work packages with clear boundaries, interfaces, accountabilities, sequencing, and acceptance logic.
    • Decide which packages should be awarded to a lead integrator, specialist supplier, OEM, or coordinated group of providers.
    • Translate each package into RFQ-ready functional requirements, scope documents, information requests, commercial schedules, and evaluation criteria.
    • Identify and prequalify suitable suppliers, brief them consistently, manage clarification, and normalize proposals for technical and commercial comparison.
    • Surface exclusions, hidden scope, lifecycle costs, integration dependencies, and contract risks before supplier selection.
    • Support negotiation, award, procurement, and implementation planning while preserving customer choice and Cenotian's vendor neutrality.
    • Remain involved through delivery where the customer needs independent coordination, change support, acceptance oversight, or value assurance. Qualified suppliers retain responsibility for detailed engineering, integration, commissioning, and service.
  6. 06

    Sell and deliver the first engagements

    • Define and launch productized, fixed-fee entry offers that lead directly into opportunity business cases and automation roadmaps.
    • Build the target account universe across small and mid-sized manufacturers, initially within selected industrial regions and production verticals.
    • Win paid engagements through direct outreach, Cenotian relationships, integrator and OEM introductions, trade bodies, and public manufacturing programs.
    • Lead discovery with owners, plant leaders, operations, engineering, maintenance, quality, finance, and frontline teams.
    • Personally deliver early engagements and remain accountable for the usefulness of every recommendation.
    • Convert successful work into references, repeat engagements, multi-site roadmaps, and qualified deployment and financing opportunities.
  7. 07

    Build a vendor-neutral capability and supplier network

    • Design and enforce explicit rules for conflicts, referral economics, disclosure, data use, and separation of advisory recommendations from financing decisions.
    • Build and maintain a qualified map of system integrators, OEMs, capability specialists, simulation providers, and regional experts.
    • Match suppliers to the required jobs, work packages, customer context, region, and delivery risk rather than to commercial preference.
    • Set evidence and performance standards for suppliers participating in consulting-led opportunities.
    • Work constructively with public automation programs as the implementation-oriented next step after an initial subsidized assessment.
  8. 08

    Productize the method and build the practice

    • Convert each engagement into reusable diagnostic modules, business-case models, roadmap tools, jobs-to-be-done taxonomies, capability maps, work-package templates, RFQ materials, benchmark ranges, and vertical playbooks.
    • Use code, simulation, and AI tooling to reduce analysis time while preserving expert judgment and traceability.
    • Distinguish work that requires a site visit from evidence that customers or partners can capture remotely.
    • Build a structured record of applications, costs, benefits, implementation risks, supplier performance, and realized outcomes.
    • Make the second engagement in a production archetype faster, more consistent, and more profitable than the first.
    • Own the practice economics, including pipeline, conversion, revenue, utilization, delivery cost, gross margin, and repeat business.
    • Define the capabilities that belong in the core team and those that should remain within a specialist partner network.
    • Recruit and develop the initial operator pair, then expand only when demand and unit economics justify it.
    • Set delivery standards, quality review, utilization expectations, and professional development for the practice.
    • Protect leadership bandwidth by building an operating model that can scale without becoming founder-dependent.

You'll know it's working when

Manufacturers pay for the entry offer and describe the output as a decision instrument rather than a report for the shelf.

Clients leave with a defensible baseline, a ranked automation roadmap, a credible business case, and clear next actions.

Weak opportunities stop before they consume customer capital or partner engineering effort.

Strong opportunities progress into scoped projects, qualified partners, and financing where appropriate.

Customers trust the practice to recommend no action when the evidence does not support investment.

Consulting revenue and gross margin become predictable, and delivery quality remains high as volume grows.

Each engagement improves Cenotian's data, methods, benchmarks, and future decision speed.

The practice operates with clear ownership and limited dependence on the founders.

Candidate profile

What we require

Nice to have

Background paths

  • 01Technical-commercial automation builder

  • 02Industrial technology founder or high-growth operator

  • 03Plant-grounded MBB consultant

Organizational context

The Head of Automation Value Engineering (SMBs) will work most closely with:

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