{"id":3344630,"url":"https://alion.io/job/scania-master-thesis-smart-factory-lab-software-defined-automation","title":"Master Thesis - smart factory lab Software-defined Automation","company":{"id":445730,"name":"Scania","domain":"scania.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/scania-4","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Career sitemap","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":100,"open_postings":18,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":17,"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"}},"role":"Early Careers","role_family":"Early Careers","seniority":null,"employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Södertälje, Sweden"],"countries":["SE"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Python","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-27T16:48:33Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-30T07:16:31Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"30 credits master thesis - smart factory lab\nSoftware-defined Automation\n- Validation of Virtual PLCs in Industrial Automation Environments\nBackground\nManufacturing industries are facing increasing demands for production flexibility. In part, due to shorter technology lifecycles, the necessity to adapt to increasing product changes and frequent software updates in the field components used, pushed in part from a security perspective. However, traditional industrial automation systems remain strongly dependent on dedicated hardware, making modifications, upgrades, and commissioning time-consuming and resource-intensive. Software-Defined Automation (SDA) offers a potential path towards more flexible and adaptable production systems by decoupling control functionality from dedicated hardware and applying software practices to the development of automation solutions.\nVirtual and software-based Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are among the technologies enabling this transition, allowing control applications to run on different computing infrastructures, including industrial PCs, virtual machines, containers, and potentially remote data centers. However, moving control applications away from dedicated hardware isn't only about ensuring real-time performance, determinism, communication latency, and system reliability. It is necessary to effectively test the application in question and not generalize for the whole industry, given the many connections to brownfield machines that exist today.\nThe Smart Factory Lab at Scania is an experimental test environment that explores, assesses, and pilots new technologies before they are adopted in Scania’s production processes. We are looking for motivated and creative students to join our Smart Factory Lab for their Master thesis. You will have the opportunity to work in a dynamic and collaborative environment, where you can test and validate new technologies, methods, and solutions in close collaboration with our internal and external stakeholders. To learn more about the Smart Factory, visit Link.\nAssignment\nThis thesis aims to bridge the gap between research and industrial practice by deploying and evaluating virtual and software-based PLCs across different execution environments. Beyond performance benchmarking, the objective is to apply and assess existing evaluation methodologies in representative industrial scenarios and develop a structured, repeatable framework for deploying, testing and validating virtual PLC applications.\nUsing the existing infrastructure, the students will deploy multiple vPLCs representing different applications, deploy the necessary software to perform the performance evaluation and develop a workflow that engineers can use to quickly deploy and validate the correct functioning of the vPLC for their application. The work may include:\nInvestigating the requirements for different applications.\nCollecting and preparing data and programs.\nRun tests and analyse data\nDocumenting the results and developing recommendations for future applications.\n\nBackground and time plan\nExperience with IEC 61131 programming languages, Python, docker, is beneficial but not necessarily required.\nStudents in Computer Science, Mechatronics, Electronics, Robotics or Engineering, who bring some background in:Control systems\nProgramming\nComputer architecture and engineering\n\nNumber of students: 1\nStart date: January 2027 (20 weeks)\nLocation: Södertälje, Sweden (at least 60% on-site)","description_format":"text","description_chars":3485,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Sweden","iso":"SE","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Industrial IoT (IIoT)"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-27T16:48:33Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":2,"expected_fill_days":17,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-30T05:48:23Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/scania-master-thesis-smart-factory-lab-software-defined-automation","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/scania-master-thesis-smart-factory-lab-software-defined-automation.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-30T09:57:40Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":14308,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-31T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":445730},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=445730"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fscania-master-thesis-smart-factory-lab-software-defined-automation"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fscania-master-thesis-smart-factory-lab-software-defined-automation"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fscania-master-thesis-smart-factory-lab-software-defined-automation"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/scania-master-thesis-smart-factory-lab-software-defined-automation\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fscania-master-thesis-smart-factory-lab-software-defined-automation"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3344630}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"scania.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3344630},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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