Specialist Operational Technology

Role PurposeThe OT Specialist owns the technology layer that connects shop floor equipment to plant and enterprisesystems. The role is responsible for designing, implementing and sustaining reliable, secure and well-documented data acquisition and control integration across manufacturing lines enabling MES, historian,analytics and quality systems with trustworthy, real-time production data.This is a hands-on engineering role, combined with a standards-setting and mentoring responsibility forplant teams.
Key Responsibilities1. Design and implementation of shop floor to IT/OT communicationsDesign, configure and deploy the connectivity layer between manufacturing equipment and IT and OTsystems, including but not limited to:• Ignition configuration and programming tag architecture, device connections and drivers, UDTs,scripting (Python), Perspective / Vision screens, alarming, gateway networks, redundancy andversion control.• Historian configuration (Canary Labs) historian architecture and sizing, tag onboarding and namingconventions, data collection and storage policies, retention, views and trends, and downstream datapublishing to analytics and reporting consumers.• I/O hardware selection specify sensors, gateways, edge devices, remote I/O, network hardware andprotocol converters to meet the sampling rate, accuracy, resilience and connectivity needs of dataacquisition systems.• Industrial connectivity protocols and patterns OPC UA / DA, MQTT and Sparkplug B, Modbus TCP,EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, serial, and file or database based interfaces.
2. Standards and documentation for OT sustainability and improvement• Create, publish and maintain OT standards covering tag naming, device onboarding, networktopology, edge architecture, backup and recovery, and change control.• Produce and maintain as-built documentation: architecture diagrams, network drawings, I/O andinterface registers, configuration baselines, SOPs and runbooks.• Drive continuous improvement of the OT estate obsolescence planning, patch and firmwarecurrency, performance tuning and technical debt reduction.
3. PLC programming and troubleshooting support• Support programming, modification and fault diagnosis of PLCs on existing manufacturingequipment (Rockwell / Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Mitsubishi, Schneider or equivalent).• Perform root cause analysis on communication failures, data quality issues and equipment interfacebreakdowns; drive permanent corrective actions.• Support commissioning, line trials, changeovers and new equipment integration with minimaldisruption to production.
4. Working with equipment vendors• Work with OEMs and equipment vendors to specify the correct hardware and softwarerequirements for shop floor manufacturing equipment, including connectivity, data access, licensingand cyber security requirements.• Review vendor technical proposals, URS / FDS responses and control system designs; participate inFAT and SAT and in acceptance of delivered systems.• Ensure delivered equipment complies with plant OT standards and integration requirements beforehandover.
5. Mentoring and guidance for plant maintenance• Mentor and coach plant maintenance and automation technicians on shop floor equipment,connectivity troubleshooting and first-line OT support.• Build capability through training material, hands-on sessions and structured knowledge transfer, sothat routine issues are resolved at plant level.• Act as the escalation point and technical authority for shop floor OT issues.|
Required Skills and Experience• 6–10 years of hands-on experience in manufacturing or plant automation, OT infrastructure orindustrial data acquisition.• Demonstrated experience configuring and programming Ignition (Inductive Automation) gateway,drivers, tags, scripting and HMI development.• Hands-on experience with a process historian; Canary Labs strongly preferred (PI, AVEVA or IgnitionHistorian considered).• Hands-on PLC programming and troubleshooting on at least one major platform (Rockwell Studio5000 / RSLogix, Siemens TIA Portal or equivalent).• Strong working knowledge of industrial protocols: OPC UA / DA, MQTT and Sparkplug B, Modbus,EtherNet/IP, PROFINET.• Ability to select and specify field instrumentation, I/O and edge hardware based on data acquisitionrequirements.• Understanding of industrial networking VLANs, switching, routing, DMZ concepts, firewalls andIT/OT network segregation.• Ability to read and interpret P&IDs, electrical and control schematics, loop drawings and I/O lists.• Strong documentation discipline and structured problem solving under production pressure.Working Conditions• Predominantly plant based, including time in production and equipment areas requiring appropriatePPE.
• Occasional off-shift, weekend or shutdown work to support commissioning, cutovers and criticalbreakdowns.• Travel to other plant or customer sites as required.