IIoT Technical Lead & Architect (Ignition 8.x/OPC UA/Azure IoT) – Full Remote Europe

ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY

A global industrial technology consultancy delivering mission-critical automation and digital transformation programmes across manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure is looking for a seasoned IIoT architect to join its growing OT/IT practice.

This is a senior individual contributor role with real architectural authority — you will shape how industrial data flows from the shop floor to the cloud, across multi-plant, multi-geography deployments. The company works with household-name enterprises, and the standards you define will outlast any single project.

Working language is English. The role is open to candidates based in Belgium, Poland, Central Europe, or the UK, fully remote.

PROJECT & CONTEXT

The team is currently leading large-scale SCADA modernisation programmes, migrating legacy systems onto Ignition 8.x and building reusable frameworks for multi-site rollouts. Projects span monolithic, enterprise, and hub-and-spoke architectures, connecting OT assets to Azure cloud services and enterprise data layers.

You'll work alongside automation engineers, enterprise IT teams, and cybersecurity specialists — bridging the operational and information technology worlds. Expect greenfield architecture, legacy migration, and governance work in roughly equal measure. The industry context is energy.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Required

• 4–8+ years of hands-on Ignition 8.x implementation experience across full project lifecycles
• Deep expertise in Gateway architecture, Perspective/Vision, Tag Historian, Alarm Pipelines, Reporting, SSO, and Gateway Network for multi-site deployments
• Proven ability to design Gateway redundancy, distributed/edge, and multi-site topologies (monolithic, enterprise, hub-and-spoke)
• Scripting fluency in Python/Jython — automation, transformation, and integration logic
• Strong command of OPC UA, MQTT (Sparkplug B), Modbus, and Ethernet/IP
• Practical Kepware integration experience; ability to connect to multiple PLC families (Siemens, Rockwell, Mitsubishi, Beckhoff)
• Solid grasp of SCADA/MES concepts — tag modelling, historian strategy, alarming design, and shop-floor realities
• Experience integrating with Azure IoT Hub, Event Hubs, Azure Functions, and Storage
• Comfortable with SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL for data pipeline and historian/BI integration
• Working knowledge of ISA-95 and IEC 62443 principles — certificate management, network segmentation, secure tunnelling
• Able to author and maintain reference architectures, naming conventions, development guidelines, and security baselines
• Clear communicator able to align automation engineers, IT architects, and non-technical stakeholders simultaneously
• Strong documentation discipline — you create the standards others follow and can mentor junior team members
• C1 Advanced English proficiency (written and spoken — team working language)
• Based in Belgium, Poland, Central Europe, or the UK

NICE TO HAVE

• Ignition Core certification (minimum) or Gold certification (ideal); Azure Architect/IoT certifications; TOGAF; ISA/IEC 62443 formal training
• Direct experience migrating legacy SCADA systems (e.g. Asdaex or similar) onto Ignition
• ThingWorx — Mashups, Data Models, Edge/SDK — for hybrid coexistence architectures
• MES integration patterns: work orders, genealogy, OEE, and manufacturing intelligence concepts
• Data governance, semantic modelling, and contextualisation for analytics and BI layers
• CI/CD practices applied to SCADA/IIoT assets — git workflows, testing frameworks, and packaging pipelines
• Master's degree in Electrical/Electronics/Automation Engineering, Computer Science, or Industrial IT (Bachelor's required as baseline)