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.
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).
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