Global Operational Technology Architect

Salary: £68,000 - 108,000 per year

Requirements:

• Significant architecture and engineering experience across operational technology, industrial automation, process control or manufacturing technology.
• Proven experience designing and governing OT architectures across multiple manufacturing sites, balancing global standards with site safety, production continuity and justified local requirements.
• Strong knowledge of industrial control systems, PLCs, SCADA/HMI, process control, plant networks, manufacturing infrastructure, historians and industrial data platforms.
• Practical knowledge of OT cybersecurity, including segmentation, secure remote access, privileged access, asset visibility, monitoring, backup, recovery and operational resilience.
• Applied knowledge of ISA-95, ISA/IEC 62443 and NIST SP 800-82.
• Confidence influencing senior Manufacturing, Engineering, Cyber Security and IT stakeholders and translating complex architecture risks into clear operational and business implications.
• Experience in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, life sciences or another regulated process-manufacturing environment is desirable.
• A bachelors degree or equivalent experience in Engineering, Automation, Control Systems, Computer Science, Cyber Security or a related discipline.

Responsibilities:

• Define, maintain and communicate our global OT reference architecture, principles, standards and approved design patterns.
• Set minimum architecture requirements for industrial control systems, process control, plant networks, manufacturing servers, engineering workstations, industrial data platforms and third-party connectivity.
• Act as our OT design authority for risk-significant investments, projects and material changes across manufacturing sites.
• Own our OT architecture exception process, ensuring material exceptions have clear ownership, documented impacts, compensating controls and a remediation route.
• Partner with Cyber Security to embed security by design across manufacturing environments.
• Develop a risk-ranked, multi-year OT architecture and technology roadmap aligned with manufacturing, resilience, safety and capital-planning priorities.
• Identify technical debt, unsupported technology, single points of failure and capability gaps, translating these into prioritised investment plans.
• Define safe, supportable integration patterns between plant systems and enterprise platforms, and enable controlled OT data sharing for analytics and approved AI use cases.
• Establish proportionate architecture assurance checkpoints across concept, design, procurement, commissioning, production release and material change.
• Support assurance, audit, regulatory and quality reviews, while maintaining current architecture documentation and a global community of practice.

Technologies:

• AI
• Support
• Security
• Architect

More:

We are Croda, a FTSE 100 organisation with more than 5,800 employees globally, specialising in research and development of innovative ingredients for the Life Sciences and Consumer Care markets. Guided by our values of Innovative, Responsible and Together, our purpose is smart science to improve lives. This role will shape a critical area of our global manufacturing technology landscape and influence how our OT architecture develops. We offer a competitive salary and benefits package. The preferred locations are the UK or Barcelona, Spain, though we can consider candidates elsewhere who can travel regularly to our international sites. The working arrangement is remote with travel to sites. We are committed to an inclusive, collaborative and diverse organisation and are an equal opportunities employer.

last updated 40 week of 2026