Smart Manufacturing Consultant (Hands-on IT/OT + Cloud)

We’re looking for a hands-on Smart Factory Architect who can design and drive delivery of edge-to-cloud industrial data & application architectures across global manufacturing sites. You’ll bridge OT systems (PLC/SCADA/DCS/MES/Historians) with cloud services (Azure/AWS/Snowflake, etc.), ensuring ISA-95 interoperability, robust cybersecurity (Zero Trust), and reliable data flows for use cases like performance analytics, predictive maintenance, and digital twins. You’ll operate as a technical leader who can review architecture, validate implementation plans, unblock delivery, and communicate clearly across engineering, OT, security, networking, and site stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Act as the technical expert for Smart Factory / Edge architectures in a multi-site, multi-stakeholder environment; Review architectural designs (edge, network, cloud, security, data models) and confirm the feasibility of implementation plans; Align with Cloud Engineers and OT consultants to ensure ISA-95 compliant IT/OT integration and interoperability across layers (L0–L4/5); Validate that all required services are deployed and configured correctly (cloud resources, edge runtime, connectivity, identity, monitoring); Define and validate edge-to-cloud data flow requirements, including tag list/signals, payload schemas/formats, naming conventions, frequency, buffering, store-and-forward, latency/availability targets, data quality rules (units, timestamps, limits, gaps, duplicates); Create logical & conceptual models for contextualization; Validate conceptual and logical modelling of the factory asset hierarchy (site/area/line/cell/equipment/component) and mapping to data streams; Support the implementation of industrial connectivity patterns (e.g., OPC UA, MQTT, Modbus, REST) and integration with OT data sources (historians, SCADA, MES, CMMS, LIMS when relevant); Drive architecture decisions for ingestion, storage, and analytics using Azure, AWS, Snowflake services; Ensure observability is in place: logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, and operational runbooks; Coordinate with site IT/networking to ensure connectivity readiness (routing, DNS, proxy, certificates), firewall rules, ports, and secure connectivity patterns (VPN/ExpressRoute/Direct Connect where applicable); Ensure alignment with factory cybersecurity and Zero Trust principles, including segmentation, least privilege, secure remote access, and auditability; Own the go-live checklist and drive issue resolution during integration testing and cutover; Support test data ingestion and end-to-end validation, from OT signal extraction through cloud ingestion, storage, and consumption; Validate performance and reliability requirements (throughput, latency, resilience, recovery) and ensure operational handover readiness; Contribute to Digital Twin concepts built on IT/OT convergence (asset hierarchy + telemetry + context); Work hands-on with OT / Smart Factory platforms such as AVEVA, Sight Machine, and/or similar (e.g., Ignition, OSIsoft/PI, Tulip, PTC ThingWorx, depending on environment)

Requirements

7+ years of experience in industrial IT/OT, smart factory, or manufacturing digitalization roles, with architect-level ownership of designs and deployments; Proven hands-on delivery experience implementing edge-to-cloud integration in real factory environments; Strong understanding of ISA-95 (integration patterns and manufacturing system layers); Industrial architectures (OT network segmentation, DMZ patterns, edge gateways); Core OT systems (PLC/SCADA/DCS, historian, MES) and data acquisition methods; Cloud architecture experience on Azure and/or AWS (plus familiarity with Snowflake, databricks and modern data platforms); Solid fundamentals in networking (firewalls, VLANs, routing, certificates, proxies) and troubleshooting in restricted environments; knowledge of identity and access management (Azure AD/RBAC/Managed Identities or AWS IAM, secrets, key management); Excellent communication skills, able to lead technical conversations with security, IT, OT, and business stakeholders globally; Edge/IIoT protocols & patterns: OPC UA, MQTT, REST APIs, store-and-forward, buffering, offline resilience; Data engineering basics: schema design, time-series concepts, streaming ingestion, partitioning, data quality checks; Cloud security: least privilege, private networking, key management, audit/logging, policy enforcement; Operational readiness: integration test planning, go-live governance, incident triage and structured problem-solving

Nice to have

Knowledge of IEC 62443 / OT security frameworks and industrial zero trust patterns; Experience with Kubernetes at edge/cloud (AKS/EKS), IaC (Terraform/Bicep/CloudFormation), and CI/CD; Experience with industrial historians and time-series stacks (e.g., AVEVA/PI-like patterns); Familiarity with data governance (catalog, lineage, access policies) and regulated environments; Experience building or operationalizing Digital Twin solutions (asset model + context + telemetry)