Global Operational Technology Architect

Global Operational Technology Architect - Location: UK or Barcelona, Spain preferred 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. Who We're Looking For 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. What You'll Be Doing
• 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, while maintaining current architecture documentation and a global community of practice. What We Offer Join a global organisation with opportunities to shape a critical area of our manufacturing technology landscape and influence how OT architecture develops across Croda. The successful candidate will receive a competitive salary and benefits package including:
• Competitive annual bonus
• Defined benefit pension scheme
• 25 days paid holiday allowance (plus bank holidays)
• Private medical insurance
• Access to share plans
• Generous parental leave Additional Information Working arrangement: Remote with travel to sites UK or Barcelona, Spain is preferred. We can consider candidates based elsewhere for the right profile, provided they are able to travel regularly to Croda sites internationally. Why Croda? At Croda, we believe our people are our difference. We are people-led, driven by the desire to do good and deliver value, a unifying principle shaped by all the great people who have travelled through Croda since our beginning in 1925. Guided by our values of Responsible, Innovative and Together, we are passionate about building an inclusive, collaborative and diverse organisation, with innovation and customer focus underpinning all that we do.