Global Operational Technology Architect

Croda is a FTSE 100 organisation where we truly believe our people are our difference. Along with our values of Innovative, Responsible and Together, this creates our Purpose, Smart science to improve lives™. With over 5,800 employees globally, we specialise in the research and development of innovative ingredients for the Life Sciences and Consumer Care markets.

As our business delivers its ambitious growth strategy, we are looking for a Global Operational Technology Architect to define and govern Croda's target OT architecture, standards and approved design patterns across our global manufacturing sites.

You will act as Croda's specialist design authority for OT, providing the architecture guardrails needed to keep our environments safe, secure, resilient and supportable, while enabling manufacturing digitalisation and operational excellence.

At Croda, we believe our people are the heart of our success. We are committed to fostering an environment where you can grow, make a meaningful impact, and thrive.

• 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 cyber security, 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.
• The confidence to influence senior Manufacturing, Engineering, Cyber Security and IT stakeholders and translate complex architecture risks into clear operational and business implications.
• Experience in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, life sciences or another regulated process-manufacturing environment is desirable.
• A bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Engineering, Automation, Control Systems, Computer Science, Cyber Security or a related discipline.

• Define, maintain and communicate Croda's 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 the OT design authority for risk-significant investments, projects and material changes across manufacturing sites. Own the 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 and regulatory or quality reviews,…