There is a stretch of high desert east of Reno that, twenty years ago, you drove past on the way to somewhere else. Today it is one of the most concentrated automation corridors on the continent. Tesla’s facility in Sparks has pulled in battery cell production, drivetrain assembly, Semi truck buildouts, and the long tail of supply infrastructure that follows a manufacturer of that scale. Every expansion cycle is another pulse of commissioning work — and every commissioning pulse pulls more controls engineers onto the plant floor.
A new contract on Automate America is sitting inside exactly that pulse.
The contract
Two PLC programmers are needed at a Tesla facility in Sparks, Nevada. The work begins May 18, 2026 and runs through July 10 — eight weeks of plant-floor commissioning, day shift, ten to twelve hours a day, five days a week.
The stack is specific:
- Siemens TIA Portal is mandatory. This is the integrated engineering environment Siemens has standardized for its modern PLC, HMI, and drive ecosystem. If your day-to-day is in TIA Portal — whether you’re configuring an S7-1500, building HMI screens in WinCC, or commissioning Safety Integrated logic — this contract is shaped around the work you already do.
- Tesla equipment and safety-device experience is strongly preferred. The plant runs Tesla-specific protocols around safety circuits, lockout/tagout, line-side configuration, and station handoffs. Engineers who have worked inside a Tesla facility before move faster on day one.
- Commissioning scope. This is not a green-field design contract. This is plant-floor commissioning — bringing systems online, validating sequences, supporting startup runs, and clearing the punch list that always exists between “the line is built” and “the line is making parts.”
Required PPE is standard for any commissioning role inside an automotive plant: safety shoes, safety glasses, hearing protection, bump cap, hi-vis vest, and full lock-out / tag-out compliance.
The full scope, all required skills, and the application path live on the contract page on Automate America: https://automateamerica.com/app/automation_work/index/3595.
Why this kind of contract is rare
Specialized commissioning windows like this one are some of the hardest contracts to fill through traditional channels. The reasons compound.
First, the skill set is narrow. Not every PLC programmer works in TIA Portal day to day — many U.S. controls engineers spend their careers in Allen-Bradley / RSLogix / Studio 5000, and Siemens-native experience is its own track. The Venn overlap of fluent in TIA Portal + has worked inside a Tesla facility + is available for an eight-week window starting in May is a small circle.
Second, the window is short. Eight weeks is too long to be a service call and too short to be a hire. Traditional staffing models are tuned for either end of the spectrum — short-term emergencies or long-term permanent placements — and the contract-length middle is structurally underserved.
Third, the location is specific. Commissioning is physical work. You are on the floor, on the panel, behind the HMI. The professional has to actually be in Sparks during the work window.
When the requirements compound like that, plant managers and integrators often spend weeks chasing the wrong shape of supplier — calling agencies that don’t carry the depth, then resorting to LinkedIn DMs and referrals from old colleagues. Most of the time the contract still doesn’t fill, and the commissioning plan slips a week.
Automate America is built for exactly this gap.
What Automate America actually is
Automate America is an industrial automation marketplace. The simplest way to describe it is what it is not:
- It is not a staffing agency. Staffing agencies are themselves customers of the platform — they post on AA when they need to source talent for their own projects.
- It is not a competitor. AA doesn’t run automation projects. It doesn’t bid on commissioning. The platform sits between the customer and the professional, and gets out of the way.
- It is not an applicant tracking system. ATS platforms are gated tools customers pay for. AA is a public marketplace — contracts and jobs are posted free, and the platform stays free for the people doing the work.
What it is: a verified directory of automation professionals across North America, sorted by skill, location, and availability. Customers post contracts and jobs at no cost. Professionals apply directly. If you ever want a hand on a posting, you reach out to info@automateamerica.com — otherwise the platform stays out of your way.
That structure is why specialized contracts like the Sparks one fill quickly on AA when they often stall everywhere else. The marketplace is pre-sorted by the exact dimensions that matter for commissioning work: hardware fluency, certifications, geography, and verified track record.
Skills that get someone moving on this contract
If you’re a controls professional reading this and weighing whether to apply, the honest read is: this is a contract for a Siemens-fluent commissioning engineer with floor instincts. The deepest skills the role rewards include:
- TIA Portal versions in active production use — V17, V18, V19. Engineers who have worked through a recent TIA upgrade cycle understand the version-specific library quirks that show up during commissioning.
- WinCC Advanced / Unified HMI development — most commissioning escalations end up at the HMI.
- Safety Integrated — F-CPUs, F-runtime groups, configurable safety logic. Most Tesla lines depend on it.
- PROFINET diagnostics — Wireshark on industrial Ethernet, topology maps, IRT vs RT. Commissioning weeks are network weeks.
- Drive commissioning — Sinamics G120 / S120 startup, parameter sets, encoder alignment.
Two training resources worth bookmarking even if you’re already deep in the stack:
- Siemens SITRAIN ITC — the manufacturer-direct training catalog (TIA Portal, S7-1500, WinCC, Safety, Sinamics): https://www.siemens.com/global/en/products/services/industry/sitrain.html
- TIA Portal documentation hub — Siemens Industry Online Support, the authoritative reference for application examples and FAQs: https://support.industry.siemens.com/
If you’ve never worked inside an automotive commissioning environment before, those two resources will not get you ready in eight weeks. They will, however, help anyone who is close tighten the parts of their stack the work will lean on.
What commissioning weeks actually feel like
For anyone outside the trade trying to picture what eight weeks of plant-floor commissioning looks like — it is some of the most concentrated engineering work that exists.
The first week is rarely about programming. It is about reading the build. Tracing IO sheets to actual wiring. Verifying that the panel matches the drawings. Powering up a section and watching what doesn’t light up. Most commissioning engineers will tell you that the first faults of a fresh line are mechanical, electrical, and instrumentation problems wearing PLC clothing — and the controls engineer is the one who finds them because the controls layer is the diagnostic layer.
Then the work shifts. Sequence validation. Cycle-time runs. Edge cases — what does the cell do if the upstream conveyor jams during a robot move, if a safety circuit opens mid-cycle, if a part is missing at a verification station. These are the questions that determine whether a line is “running” or “running well.”
By week six or seven the line is running parts and the engineer is closing the punch list — small alarms that misfire, an HMI screen that needs another button, an OPC tag the MES team needs exposed.
By week eight the engineer hands off and walks. The plant runs.
This is the rhythm two PLC programmers will live for the Sparks contract.
And if you’re on the other side of the desk
If you’re an engineering lead, an operations director, a plant manager, or an integrator carrying a similar shape of work — specialized contract, narrow window, hard to source — Automate America was built for you, too.
Posting a contract costs nothing. You see verified profiles before anyone reaches you. You choose who you talk to. The platform stays out of your way.
Most customers who post for the first time say the same thing afterward: it filled faster than they expected, and the conversation started with the right people instead of a flood of mismatched applicants. The marketplace is already sorted by skill.
If you have a commissioning window, a programming buildout, a maintenance contract, or an RFQ you have been meaning to formalize, you can put it in front of the country’s automation talent pool today. Free. No agency in the middle. Posting takes a few minutes.
Closing
Sparks, Nevada will commission more lines this summer than most regions of the country do in a year. The Tesla contract on the platform right now is one window into that.
If you’re a PLC programmer, the link is below. If you’re a customer, the link to post is below that.
The whole point of Automate America is that work shaped like this finds people shaped like this. Thanks for reading — and thanks for being part of the network that makes American manufacturing keep running.
— Tony Wallace
— Founder, Automate America
Contract: https://automateamerica.com/app/automation_work/index/3595
Post your own contract — free: https://automateamerica.com/app/automation_work/add
Browse open contracts: https://automateamerica.com/app/automation_work
