R&D Prague - Projects

Digital Platform is a cloud and edge native foundation for building the next generation of industrial software. It’s a set of interconnected services running on edge devices and in the cloud, designed to power Rockwell Automation end-user products for designing, operating, and maintaining a manufacturing plant.

For software developers, Digital Platform means real engineering problems at scale: secure, distributed systems; cloud native and edge workloads; data, interaction, and infrastructure services with clear responsibilities and APIs. The platform is built to be scalable, secure, and composable, so teams can focus on delivering product value instead of reinventing plumbing.

Under the hood, Digital Platform is built using modern software engineering technologies and practices. Services are developed as cloud native workloads, including Kubernetes based edge applications, packaged and tested using Docker images and CI/CD pipelines. The platform follows modern architecture patterns and leverages state of the art tools.

If you enjoy modern architectures, platform thinking, and building reusable services that power multiple products, Digital Platform is where industrial software meets serious software engineering.

Embedded Toolkits is a developer centric program that delivers battletested, reusable software building blocks you can embed directly into products so teams stop reinventing the wheel and start shipping faster.

The toolkits provide production ready implementations of common platform, connectivity, security, and infrastructure capabilities, designed to be adopted across multiple products and environments. They are fully documented, continuously tested, long term supported, and aligned with strict product lifecycle and conformance requirements.

For developers, this means:

• less boilerplate and duplicated code,
• faster time to market with proven components,
• Built-in quality, security, and standards compliance,
• and real engineering support instead of “drop and pray” libraries.

Embedded Toolkits turn complex, crosscutting concerns into reliable building blocks, letting developers focus on what actually differentiates their product.

WTUI (Web Tech UI Toolkit) is an Angular-based design system and component library that lets teams ship polished web UIs faster—without sacrificing consistency, accessibility, or maintainability. It provides reusable UI primitives and higher-level components, responsive design guidance, and a well-documented adoption path so product teams can focus on features with UX consistent across all Rockwell Automation software products. 

What makes it fun for engineers: it’s real platform work on the frontend—component architecture, API design, and quality at scale—backed by practical tooling. WTUI is built as an Angular toolkit with coding standards enforced via lint rules, a documented contribution process, and automated validation through unit and end-to-end testing. It also leans into modern delivery practices, including CI modernization using Docker-based execution and standardized package publishing so adopters that include major Rockwell Automation products can consume releases cleanly.

Embedded Software & Control (ESW S&C) in Prague develops the firmware that runs inside Rockwell Automation industrial devices. Our teams work close to hardware, building firmware and control software for embedded platforms, using RTOS-based and Linux-based systems. Our engineers work on creating software that must be reliable, maintainable, and efficient on resource constrained hardware.

The work spans the full embedded software lifecycle - from understanding system requirements and designing modular architectures, through implementation and debugging, to validation using automated tests, simulation, and hardware-in-the-loop setups. On the technology side, we combine hands-on embedded engineering with established development tooling. We develop primarily in C and C++ for ARM Cortex–based platforms and custom industrial controllers, using clearly defined hardware abstraction layers. Our development environment is built around GitLab and Jenkins to support continuous integration, with TRACE32 used for low-level analysis and troubleshooting when investigating system behavior close to the hardware. We work in an agile manner, iterating frequently, adapting to change, and continuously improving both our software and our ways of working.

You’ll collaborate closely with hardware, software, and architecture teams, solving concrete engineering problems that directly impact industrial products used worldwide. If you enjoy working close to the metal, reasoning about system behavior, and taking ownership of embedded software that ships to the field, Embedded Software & Control in Prague offers a strong technical environment with real responsibility and long-term impact.

FactoryTalk Design Studio is a cloud-first engineering workspace for building and evolving industrial control systems—think “automation projects,” but with the workflow you expect from modern software: collaboration built in, reusable building blocks, and always up to date delivery in the cloud instead of heavyweight local installs.

In Prague, we’re building the platform foundations that make that experience feel fast and reliable at scale. On the backend, that means cloud services for user and organization provisioning, scalable “workspaces” and login, running on a cloud native stack including Go + Kubernetes and Helm + Azure, with GitHub CI/CD and production-grade observability (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana) so you can see what’s happening, not guess.

We also work on the functionality for managing connected devices inside the product: TypeScript + Angular on the frontend, Node.js, C#/.NET and Kotlin on the backend, and of course, automated functional testing.

If you enjoy distributed systems, cloud engineering, and real products with real constraints—where your services directly power how ​users interact with the system in the physical world—this is exactly that kind of work.

Emulate3D by Rockwell Automation is a digital twin and simulation software designed for testing and validating automation systems before they are built, enhancing efficiency and reducing risks in industrial operations.

The Emulate3D team in Prague is focused on building Emulate3D catalogs of standard objects for specific industries, for example design of production lines in automotive industry, and for supporting of automatic control code generation. This way, the customer is provided with a coherent set of tools including production line design and building its digital twin, control code design, deployment of the control code on a physical or virtual controller, and testing the automation solution on the digital twin.

The process control group in Prague is focused on development of standalone products as well instructions for Control Logix for the process control applications, including advanced process control. These products and an inherent part of Rockwell Automation’s PlantPAx platform—a distributed control system designed for process automation in industries such as chemicals, oil & gas, food & beverage, life sciences, water/wastewater, and power. 

The Advanced Technology is a world-class research laboratory that helps Rockwell Automation to deliver new products and services, but also to advance the entire industrial automation through robust thought leadership and engagement with the standards and academic community.

The team works to address anticipated customer needs, validate the future of Rockwell products, and identify opportunities and limitations of new technologies. Our research results are critical inputs to product and service development and are a significant contributor to Rockwell’s intellectual property portfolio.

The team is also part of the Prague R&D ecosystem, collaborating with engineering and architecture teams. Currently, we focus on control engineering, AI/ML applications, system security, functional and dynamic safety, and we are also looking to expand to communications and modern software.

Our lab collaborates with local universities to share knowledge, experience, and best practices to create the advanced technologies of tomorrow.