Industrial Automation Engineer
Manufacturing & Production
An Industrial Automation Engineer makes machines run themselves. In a factory, the engineer decides how a production line should behave, writes the logic for the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that drive it, chooses sensors and motor drives, designs the control panel wiring, and builds the SCADA or HMI screens that operators use to watch and control the plant. Day to day the work is a mix of desk work (drawings, PLC programming, testing logic) and time on the plant floor commissioning equipment, tracing faults and training operators. In Nigeria this work is found in breweries and bottling plants, cement factories, flour mills and food and beverage companies, pharmaceutical plants, oil and gas facilities and their service companies, and in automation and systems-integration firms that install equipment for those clients. Much of the equipment is imported (Siemens, Allen-Bradley, Schneider, Mitsubishi), so a lot of learning happens from manuals and vendor training rather than from a textbook.
Salary (Nigeria)
₦4M–₦15M
Exam requirements
Career pathway
WAEC/NECO credits including Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and English
Five credits at not more than two sittings, with Mathematics and Physics as the core subjects for any engineering admission. Sit UTME with Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.
B.Eng/B.Sc in Electrical/Electronic, Mechatronics, Computer or Mechanical Engineering
5 years
Nigerian engineering degrees run five years and include SIWES industrial attachment, usually in 200 and 400 level. Use SIWES to get into a factory or automation firm rather than an office — that placement is often how the first job comes.
NYSC
1 year
Compulsory national service for graduates under 30. Many manufacturers retain corps members who served in their maintenance or engineering departments.
Vendor and platform training in PLC/SCADA
Practical automation is learned on specific platforms — Siemens TIA Portal/S7, Allen-Bradley RSLogix, Schneider. Short courses are offered by private training centres in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, and a lot can be self-taught on free simulation software before you can afford a course.
Register with COREN
COREN registration as a Registered Engineer normally follows several years of supervised post-graduation experience and a professional interview. It is not needed for your first automation job, but it matters for senior roles, consultancy and signing off engineering work in Nigeria.
Common challenges
Universities teach the theory, not the equipment
DifficultMany Nigerian engineering departments have few working PLCs, and power problems limit laboratory time. Graduates often reach interviews having never wired a control panel or downloaded a program to a controller.
How to handle: Close the gap yourself while you are still a student. Siemens, Codesys and others give free or trial programming software you can run on a laptop and simulate without hardware, and there are cheap Arduino and ESP32 boards that teach the same input-sensor-output thinking. Join your department's robotics or engineering society, and treat SIWES as a job hunt: target a brewery, bottling plant or automation firm rather than a comfortable office placement.
The jobs are concentrated in a few industrial cities
ModerateAutomation work follows large manufacturing — Lagos, Ogun (Agbara, Sango-Ota), Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Kano and the cement belt. A graduate in a state with little industry may find no local employer at all.
How to handle: Decide early that you may have to move, and plan for it — ask for NYSC posting to an industrial state, and build a contact or two through SIWES and LinkedIn in the place you want to work before you finish school. If moving is not possible now, start where machines exist near you: any bottling plant, mill, borehole or generator maintenance outfit teaches you motors, sensors and starters, and that experience transfers.
You must keep learning on imported platforms at your own cost
ModerateSkills are tied to specific brands, and formal Siemens or Rockwell courses in Nigeria are expensive and sometimes only available abroad. Naira costs for training and software rise with the exchange rate.
How to handle: Learn in the order that costs least first: free simulation software, manufacturers' own manuals and free online courses, then paid training once an employer will part-fund it. Many Nigerian automation engineers were trained by their company after they proved themselves on smaller jobs, so getting inside a firm matters more than paying for a certificate first.
Factory conditions and call-outs
ModerateWhen a production line stops, the plant loses money every hour, so automation staff work shifts, night call-outs and long commissioning weekends in hot, noisy environments.
How to handle: Be honest with yourself about whether that suits you before you choose the course — visit a factory during an open day or SIWES and watch a shift. If you like the work but not the floor, the same degree leads to design, systems integration and instrumentation roles that are less shift-based.
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Key skills
Minimum qualification
B.Eng/B.Sc in Electrical/Electronic, Mechatronics or Computer Engineering