IT Project Manager - MES/Manufacturing Systems

About the role

We are seeking an experienced IT Project Manager with proven MES project delivery experience to lead manufacturing technology initiatives in a production-critical environment. This is a project-management role rather than an MES engineering role: the successful candidate must understand MES and manufacturing dependencies well enough to plan, govern and drive complex work across manufacturing, IT, OT, automation, equipment, applications, infrastructure, vendors and global stakeholders. The Project Manager will own the project from initiation through testing, cutover, go-live, stabilization and closure.

Key responsibilities

• Lead MES implementation (Camstar or CMF), rollout, migration, upgrade, integration or transformation projects from initiation through production stabilization.
• Define project scope, objectives, deliverables, success criteria, work breakdown, milestones and acceptance requirements.
• Develop and maintain an integrated project plan covering requirements, solution/configuration, interfaces, data readiness, testing, training, cutover, go-live and hypercare.
• Own delivery against agreed scope, schedule, cost, resources and quality; establish recovery plans when commitments are at risk.
• Coordinate manufacturing, process engineering, IT, OT, automation, equipment, infrastructure, cybersecurity, application, data and vendor workstreams.
• Ensure MES requirements are aligned with production processes such as routing, WIP, traceability, genealogy, quality, material flow, production orders and equipment states as relevant to the project.
• Manage dependencies between MES and ERP, manufacturing applications, equipment/automation interfaces, databases, middleware and site infrastructure.
• Establish a disciplined governance model including project cadence, workstream reviews, management/steering updates and escalation routes.
• Coordinate functional, system, integration, manufacturing scenario, regression and UAT activities; ensure defects are prioritized and resolved to agreed readiness criteria.
• Develop detailed cutover plans covering business, application, interface, infrastructure, data, vendor and production-readiness activities.

About you

• 10+ years of IT / technology project experience with demonstrated leadership in manufacturing environments.
• Must have personally managed at least one significant MES implementation, rollout, migration, upgrade or transformation project end-to-end.
• Strong practical experience in scope, schedule, budget, resource, RAID, governance, change control, vendor management, testing and cutover.
• Good understanding of manufacturing operations and MES dependencies with ERP, equipment/automation, infrastructure and production processes.
• Strong Waterfall, Agile and/or hybrid project-management capability and structured, results-oriented working style.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication and escalation skills across business, manufacturing and technical teams.
• Fluent English and onsite availability required.
• Exposure to Siemens Opcenter/Camstar, Critical Manufacturing, Apriso, MESPro or another enterprise MES platform.
• Working knowledge of equipment/factory integration concepts such as SECS/GEM, HSMS, OPC/OPC-UA, MQTT, APIs, SQL or middleware.
• PMP, PRINCE2, Scrum or equivalent project-management certification is advantageous.