Senior Specialist, MES Platform Engineer

At Bristol Myers Squibb, our employees often ask, “Who are you working for?”—a question that fuels collaboration, accountability, and urgency in our work. Our purpose-driven culture inspires us to discover, develop, and deliver innovative medicines to prevail over serious diseases. We offer uniquely interesting and meaningful work, opportunities for growth, and a supportive environment that values inclusion, wellbeing, flexibility, and comprehensive benefits.

This is work that transforms the lives of patients, and the careers of those who do it.

Position Summary

As part of the Digital Plant department Manufacturing IT Systems & MES for the Leiden Cell Therapy Facility (CTF), the Senior Specialist, MES Platform Engineer is responsible for the administration, maintenance, configuration, and continuous improvement of the Syncade MES (Manufacturing Execution System) environment. The role combines technical system administration responsibilities with recipe authoring expertise to ensure reliable MES operations, GMP compliance, optimal system performance, and efficient execution of manufacturing processes.

The position serves as a key bridge between manufacturing operations, quality, validation, and IT teams by supporting MES infrastructure, user administration, master data management, recipe development, system enhancements, and business process improvements.

Duties / Responsibilities

MES System Administration & Maintenance

• Manage and maintain the MES application environment, including integrations and peripheral devices such as scanners and label printers.
• Monitor MES application health, availability, performance, and underlying hardware components.
• Support installation, configuration, upgrades, patches, and lifecycle management activities.
• Perform routine system reviews and execute corrective and preventive measures to maintain system reliability.
• Collaborate with Shared Services and infrastructure teams to define and manage application versus infrastructure responsibilities.

Recipe Design & Configuration

• Design, configure, document, and maintain Master Recipes using standardized corporate objects and approved building blocks.
• Analyse business requirements and translate operational processes into MES solutions.
• Maintain and enhance existing recipes while ensuring consistency, usability, and compliance.
• Evaluate and implement new objects, templates, and configuration components supporting recipe development and manufacturing improvements.

Master Data & User Administration

• Execute master data management activities to ensure data integrity and consistency within MES.
• Manage MES user access in compliance with approved procedures and regulatory requirements.
• Support periodic access reviews and maintain appropriate segregation of duties.
• Configure and maintain MES system settings supporting manufacturing operations.

Reporting, Labels & Configuration Management

• Create and maintain MES reports, labels, label formats, and related configuration designs.
• Support manufacturing operations through effective reporting and labelling solutions.
• Maintain documentation and traceability related to MES configuration changes.

Testing, Validation & Compliance

• Develop and execute testing activities supporting new recipes, system changes, and MES enhancements.
• Support creation of User Acceptance Test (UAT) scripts and validation deliverables.
• Participate in dry runs, qualification activities, and validation reviews.
• Ensure MES solutions remain compliant with GMP, GxP, Data Integrity, and Computer System Validation requirements.
• Support risk assessments, impact assessments, and change control activities.

System Upgrades & Continuous Improvement

• Support MES upgrade projects, platform enhancements, and technology lifecycle initiatives.
• Identify…