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.

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Key responsibilities

Architecture & technical leadership

•            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).

Edge-to-cloud integration & data flow validation

•            Define and validate edge-to-cloud data flow requirements, including:

o            Tag list/signals, payload schemas/formats, naming conventions

o            Frequency, buffering, store-and-forward, latency/availability targets

o            Data quality rules (units, timestamps, limits, gaps, duplicates)

o            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).

Cloud & platform enablement (Azure/AWS/Snowflake)

•            Drive architecture decisions for ingestion, storage, and analytics using services such as:

o            Azure (IoT Hub, Event Hubs, Functions, AKS, Data Lake, Databricks/Synapse, Monitor, Key Vault, Private Link)

o            AWS (IoT Core, Kinesis, Lambda, EKS, S3, Glue, CloudWatch, Secrets Manager, Greengrass)

o            Snowflake (ingestion patterns, data modeling, governance, performance considerations)

•            Ensure observability is in place: logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, and operational runbooks.

Network, cybersecurity & site readiness

•            Coordinate with site IT/networking to ensure:

o            Connectivity readiness (routing, DNS, proxy, certificates)

o            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.

Testing, go-live, and operational stabilization

•            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.

Digital Twin & OT platforms

•            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).

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Required qualifications & experience

•            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:

o            ISA-95 (integration patterns and manufacturing system layers)

o            Industrial architectures (OT network segmentation, DMZ patterns, edge gateways)

o            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.

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Technical skill set (must-have)

•            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

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Preferred / 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).

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