Recruiting automation and PLC technicians: what actually defines the role

What sits under "automation"

Roles with very different content meet under one name, and each of them emphasises a different skill.

The difference between them matters more for recruitment than the job title itself. A technician who has reliably maintained existing lines for years need not be the one who will prepare the control system of a new machine — and the other way round.

What can sit behind the same title:

• Maintenance and diagnosis of equipment already in operation
• Commissioning new lines and debugging them
• Modifying programs as production changes
• Designing the control part of equipment and its documentation

What follows from regulation, and what does not

It helps to separate three things that are routinely mixed together in advertisements.

Regulated competence: if a person is to perform activity on electrical equipment, their competence is governed by Czech government regulation 194/2022 Sb. That is a legal requirement attached to the activity and the equipment, not to a job title. Where a company operates reserved technical equipment, Czech Act 250/2021 Sb. applies as well.

Industry convention: knowledge of a particular control-system platform, experience with a particular type of fieldbus, or practice with a given manufacturer’s robots. None of that follows from any regulation, even though employers often state it as a condition.

A company’s own choice: the systems in use, the language of the documentation, the way programs are managed, and remote access to equipment. This is set by the company alone, and a candidate cannot know it in advance.

The same separation answers whether the position can be filled from abroad: it can. What it adds is a check on the documents — with a qualification obtained outside the Czech Republic, establish whether and in what form it is recognised for the activity concerned before you count on it. Recognition of qualifications gained abroad is a subject in its own right and is dealt with separately.

Control platforms, and how to treat them in a brief

Knowledge of a specific platform is the most common reason a brief narrows the pool unnecessarily. Environments differ between manufacturers, but the logic of the work largely transfers — a technician who understands what the control system is supposed to do will find their way around another environment, given time.

It is therefore worth separating in the brief what is genuinely essential from what can be learned. In an operation with a single platform and no capacity to train, the requirement is justified. Where several systems sit side by side, the ability to read documentation and to look for the cause of a fault systematically usually matters more.

What the brief will not take from this page is a wage level. None is stated for these roles and we do not invent them; orientation is provided by the Czech average-earnings information system (ISPV), operated by the Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MPSV), where the figures can be worked with by occupation and by region.

What the brief should answer:

• Which systems are actually deployed in the operation
• Whether the work is modifying existing programs or writing new ones
• Whether anyone is available to introduce a newcomer to the environment
• What share of the work happens at the equipment, and what away from it

The safety part, and why to ask about it separately

The safety circuits of machinery are the area where candidates’ experience differs most and where it is hardest to tell from a CV. Some have worked only in process logic; others have regularly dealt with safety functions and their documentation.

For an operation that matters, because intervention in the safety part of equipment has different consequences from a change to process logic. This experience is best verified with a question of its own, rather than assumed from length of practice.

What to ask during selection

For automation it pays to ask about concrete situations rather than for a list of technologies. A description of a fault actually dealt with, including how the candidate reached the cause, says more about how they work than a list of abbreviations.

It is equally worth going through how the candidate works with documentation and what they leave behind them. In an operation where equipment is run for years, the traceability of the modifications made is often worth more than the speed of the intervention itself.

What to cover in selection:

• A description of a specific fault and of the route to clearing it
• Experience of commissioning equipment
• The approach to documentation and to the record of changes made
• Experience with the safety part of equipment
• Willingness to travel out to sites or to be on call, where the operation requires it