Forward Deployed Operator - Hardware Engineering

Onodrim Industries; Amsterdam; On-site; EUR 70,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Onodrim Industries is building Europe’s largest defence and industrial platform. Forward Deployed Operators embed inside acquired plants to install sensing, monitoring and retrofit legacy equipment.

This hardware role focuses on designing and deploying sensing, edge devices and interfaces on-site, collaborating with software and production teams, and training staff to keep systems running and compliant across Europe.

Qualifications

• Degree in electrical, electronic, mechatronic or mechanical engineering or equivalent hardware track record.
• 3–5 years hands-on hardware engineering in industrial environments.

Responsibilities

• Find the real problem by walking the plant with maintenance and production teams.
• Instrument the line by installing sensing and monitoring on machines and processes.
• Upgrade ageing equipment to current standards and document changes.
• Design and build custom electronics, fixtures and interface hardware.
• Connect data through OPC UA, Modbus, PROFINET and other protocols to plant systems.
• Deploy hardware at portfolio sites and train maintenance staff.
• Ensure safety, compliance, wiring, grounding and certification for installations.
• Train operators and create runbooks to enable the site to operate autonomously.
• Capture field learnings and feed back to product and R&D teams.
• Agree measurable outcomes and track downtime, data coverage and yield.

Skills

Hands-on hardware engineering

Industrial instrumentation & controls

Sensing and data collection

On-site commissioning

English communication

Education

Electrical/electronic/mechatronic/mechanical engineering degree

Tools

PLC programming

Modbus

SCADA

Embedded firmware

Job description

About the role

Onodrim is building Europe's largest defence and industrial platform. We acquire specialist manufacturers in critical defence and dual-use supply chains, then invest behind their growth with capital, technology and operating know-how.

Forward Deployed Operators are Onodrim's people on the ground. You'll embed inside the companies we acquire – plants, lines, warehouses and the test bays behind them – and own one part of making them grow. For this role, that part is the hardware.

The manufacturers we buy run on equipment that is often decades old and still excellent at its job, with little instrumentation, controls that predate the people operating them, and no reliable data on how the machines and processes actually behave. The Forward Deployed Operator for Hardware Engineering changes that. You'll put sensing and monitoring onto lines and machines that have none, bring legacy equipment, controls and test systems up to the current state of the art, and get the resulting data into the hands of the people who run the plant and into Onodrim's platform – shipping something that works within weeks, on top of what is already there, and staying until it is used every day.

This is not a design-office job. One morning you'll be fitting a vibration sensor to a spindle with the maintenance technician; that afternoon you'll be reverse‑engineering a controller nobody has documentation for; the next week you'll be commissioning a retrofit and training the shift that will own it. You'll work alongside the Forward Deployed Operators for Software and Production Engineering – they find where a plant loses value and build the software on top; you build the hardware underneath – and you'll deploy, where it fits, the sensing and compute products Onodrim's own R&D unit builds. What you learn on site flows back into what Onodrim builds next.

What you'll do

• Find the real problem. Walk the plant with maintenance, production and quality; work out which machines, processes and measurements actually matter before deciding what to instrument or upgrade.
• Instrument the line. Specify, install and commission sensing and monitoring on machines and processes that have none – vibration, temperature, current, pressure, acoustic, vision, position – and the edge devices and networks that carry the data.
• Upgrade legacy equipment. Bring ageing controls, drives, instrumentation and test systems up to the current state of the art: retrofit controllers, replace obsolete electronics, add interfaces, and document what nobody has documented.
• Build what's missing. Design and build custom electronics, fixtures, test rigs and interface hardware where off‑the‑shelf products fall short, and get them made quickly – in‑house or with local suppliers.
• Connect it to the data. Get machine and process data out through the right protocols – OPC UA, Modbus, PROFINET, serial, whatever the machine speaks – into the plant's systems and Onodrim's platform, working with the Software Engineering Operators on what happens next.
• Deploy Onodrim's own hardware. Where a site's problem matches a sensing or compute product from our R&D unit, install, adapt and support it, and feed what you learn back to the R&D team.
• Make it safe and compliant. Work inside the plant's electrical, machine-safety and explosive‑atmosphere rules; make sure every installation is wired, grounded, certified and documented to the standard the site and its customers require.
• Make it stick. Train maintenance and operators, write the drawings and runbooks, handle the first weeks of support and leave the site able to run and maintain what you built without you.
• Own outcomes. Agree measurable targets with the site – systems in daily use, downtime avoided, data coverage, cycle‑time or yield unlocked – track them and stay accountable.
• Feed the product. Bring field patterns back to Onodrim's product and R&D teams so what works at one site becomes standard at the next.

What you'll bring

• A degree in electrical, electronic, mechatronic or mechanical engineering, or a closely related discipline – or an equivalent track record of hardware you have built and commissioned.
• At least 3–5 years as a hands‑on hardware engineer, with real time spent in industrial environments: commissioning, retrofitting, automation, instrumentation, test equipment or field service.
• Fluency across the stack: sensors and signal conditioning, analogue and digital electronics, embedded firmware, industrial networks and protocols, and the electrical and mechanical practicalities of installing on a working machine.
• Experience with industrial controls and automation – PLCs, drives, HMIs, SCADA – and with upgrading or integrating legacy equipment rather than only specifying new.
• A builder's mindset: you'd rather have a working installation this week and improve it than design the perfect system for next quarter, and you finish what you start.
• Good judgement on build vs. buy vs. retrofit, and the willingness to use an off‑the‑shelf part when it does the job.
• Comfort with data: you can get a clean signal out of a machine, sanity‑check it, and work with software engineers on what happens to it next.
• Credibility with non‑engineers: you can work alongside a maintenance technician on night shift and explain what you're doing to a plant director.
• Working knowledge of electrical safety, machine safety and certification requirements in industrial settings.
• Clear, direct communication in English, written and spoken.
• Willingness to travel extensively and spend extended periods on site at portfolio companies across Europe.
• Right to work in the UK, Switzerland or the EU.

Nice to have

• We operate our business in English; knowledge of a European language other than English is beneficial.
• Condition‑monitoring or predictive‑maintenance experience – vibration analysis, thermography, motor current signature analysis – and a view on which of it actually pays off.
• Experience with machine vision, acoustic or other sensing modalities in a production setting.
• Exposure to machining, forming, joining, composites or energetics production and the measurement problems specific to each.
• Familiarity with edge‑compute platforms and low‑power embedded systems, and with getting their data into a modern data platform.
• Experience with explosive‑atmosphere (ATEX/IECEx) or defence‑site requirements.
• PCB design, mechanical CAD or rapid‑prototyping skills for the custom parts a retrofit needs.
• Time at a hardware start‑up, a systems integrator or a field‑service organisation where you did whatever the installation needed.
• Clearance in at least one of our operating countries.