Looking for career advice

[MaGoOoDy]

Hi,
I have some questions about the career of PLC Engineer and I am seeking advices from you .
I am an electrical engineer who has 4 years experience in construction field which consists of constructing and developing residental projects. I don't have that any exposure to PLC work , I worked in project consisting of building residental villas and developing nieborhood center and the PLC work which is part of our contract it is not that huge job, it is including lift stations (PLC and SCADA ) and irrigation system (PLC and SCADA ) and ongoing work for Building management system ( BMS ) in the nieborhood center.

I am considering myself newbie to the PLC field itself and I have no intensive working experience in PLC programming job, but actually I am well trained I have conducted some good practical (hands on) training courses in PLC and SCADA and a little bit of DCS.

The issue is I have plan to leave the construction field and concentrate and focus on Automation field, since I am living in a city which have a huge amount of Oil and gas industries, and the average salaries on O&G field is better than construction field .

I am still on the job but I have started looking for any opportunity as PLC programmer, but since I have no pure experience on the field this made my search i will not say useless but is difficult.

So I don't know what I have to look for exactly, which type of companies I have to look for , main contractors, system integrators, subcontractors ...etc , also I am planning to obtain some certificates of Siemens and Rockwell ( thinking this will taper my skills and polish my resume in order to let the employer hire me ) but I don't know if this really worth the effort or not .

I need some advices , and i appreciate any opinions you guys share it with me .

 

[MaGoOoDy]

Any help ..

 

[cjd1965]

I would look into Integrators.

Good luck

 

[rdlackey]

Basically you want to branch off into being an PLC engineer or controls engineer but unsure what industry to go into cause of your lack of experience? The problem is you will most likely take a paycut regardless. Look at industries that are changing over to more automation and don't know what they need. I was able to get into the field by convincing an mechanical engineer that I could do anything. They were working with 1970's to 1980's technology and was willing to update.