Need Data Integration Lead- Remote – occasional travel to Parsippany, NJ and/or Richmond, VA

Position :     Data Integration Lead – OT / Manufacturing Data
Location:     Primarily Remote – occasional travel to Parsippany, NJ and/or Richmond, VA
Duration:     6-Month Contract-to-Hire
Interview Process: 2 video interviews; an onsite interview may be requested depending on candidate location
Background Check: Required
Permanent Candidates: Candidates interested in direct-hire only may also be considered

Position Overview :

The Data Integration Lead will own the secure and governed movement of plant/OT data into client Unified Data Platform (UDP). This individual will sit at the intersection of Operational Technology (OT), Information Technology (IT), data engineering, and plant operations, establishing the architecture and standards for integrating manufacturing systems across the organization.

Candidates coming from manufacturing, chemical/process manufacturing, automotive, or similar industrial environments are strongly preferred.

Core Mission :

Design and deliver secure, scalable, observable OT → DMZ → IT/Enterprise Data Platform integrations that:

• Prevent direct analytics access to plant control networks through secure broker/DMZ patterns.
• Deliver trustworthy, near-real-time time-series and event data from manufacturing systems.
• Support enterprise analytics, Power BI, APIs, ML, and AI use cases.
• Maintain plant security, reliability, compliance, and production uptime.

Key Responsibilities :

OT Data Architecture & Integration

• Own and evolve the enterprise architecture for secure OT-to-IT data integration across plant systems, DMZ layers, and the Unified Data Platform.
• Establish standards for OT connectivity, protocols, data models, security, governance, and data quality.
• Design secure OT data-egress architectures using OPC UA, MQTT/AMQP brokers, data diodes, one-way gateways, and DMZ nodes.
• Ensure enterprise analytics platforms never require direct access to control networks.
• Develop reusable onboarding patterns, templates, and playbooks for integrating additional plants and manufacturing units.
• Design store-and-forward/buffering strategies that maintain data continuity without affecting plant operations.
• Define network zones, firewall requirements, certificates, endpoint hardening, and other OT integration standards.

Historians, SCADA & Industrial Data :

• Lead data extraction and integration across Honeywell PHD and/or AVEVA/OSIsoft PI historians, DCS, PLC, SCADA, LIMS, and laboratory systems.
• Develop and manage equipment/asset hierarchies, historian models, alarm/event streams, and event frames.
• Model manufacturing events including batches, phases, grade changes, alarms, and equipment states.
• Condition time-series signals through resampling, interpolation, dead-banding, outlier detection, and sensor validation.
• Incorporate units, calibration metadata, production calendars, and ISA-88/ISA-95 structures.
• Develop reusable industrial data products around assets, batches, equipment performance, and operational KPIs.

Enterprise Data Platform & Analytics :

• Publish governed OT data into the Unified Data Platform through landing → curated → semantic layers.
• Build production-grade integrations between industrial systems and modern Data Lake/Lakehouse environments.
• Prepare manufacturing data for consumption through Power BI, APIs, analytics, machine learning, and AI/agentic automation.
• Partner closely with Unified Data Platform & AI Engineering and Reporting/BI teams.
• Establish contracted schemas, lineage, data-quality standards, and certified datasets.
• Support modern Azure-based ingestion technologies including Event Hubs, Kafka, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, and IoT Edge where applicable.

Reliability, Security & Governance :

• Implement monitoring for data freshness, gaps, historian/tag availability, schema drift, and data quality.
• Establish SLAs/SLOs and automated data-quality scoring for critical OT data pipelines.
• Implement lineage and observability across industrial data flows.
• Partner with Cyber/IT teams to enforce ISA/IEC 62443 / ISA-99 principles.
• Support RBAC, least privilege, credential vaulting, certificate management, patching, and vulnerability remediation.
• Lead change control/MOC, outage coordination, validation, and incident-response procedures for OT data integrations.

Leadership & Collaboration :

• Serve as the single-threaded leader for OT data integration across plants.
• Partner with plant Controls, Process Engineering, Reliability/Maintenance, HSE, Quality, Supply Chain, Engineering, Cybersecurity, IT, and Data teams.
• Drive the roadmap and prioritization of OT data integration initiatives.
• Translate plant requirements into scalable enterprise integration patterns.
• Guide historian/SCADA vendors and systems integrators through clear definitions of done, acceptance testing, and knowledge transfer.

Required Qualifications :

• 7+ years of OT/controls or OT data integration experience involving DCS, PLC, SCADA, historians, and industrial systems.
• Strong hands-on experience with Honeywell PHD and/or AVEVA/OSIsoft PI.
• Experience with PI AF/asset models, event frames, historian interfaces/connectors, or equivalent PHD functionality.
• Strong experience with OPC UA and MQTT.
• Experience with Kepware, Ignition, or comparable industrial gateways/brokers.
• Proven experience designing secure OT → DMZ → IT architectures, including firewalls, certificates, brokers, and network segmentation.
• Experience developing production-grade data pipelines into enterprise data platforms, Data Lakes, or Lakehouses.
• Knowledge of time-series data conditioning and industrial event modeling.
• Understanding of ISA-88/ISA-95 manufacturing structures and batch/phase concepts.
• Hands-on SQL and Python skills for data validation, integration, utilities, or automation.
• Familiarity with Windows Server-based industrial environments.
• Working knowledge of industrial cybersecurity and ISA/IEC 62443 principles.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to work across plant engineering, OT, IT, cybersecurity, data engineering, and business teams.

Preferred Qualifications :

• Manufacturing, chemical/process manufacturing, or automotive industry experience.
• Honeywell PHD + AVEVA PI experience.
• Sparkplug B experience.
• Azure industrial/data ingestion experience including Azure IoT Edge, Event Hubs, Kafka, Databricks, or Microsoft Fabric.
• Enterprise-scale PI AF/Event Frames or equivalent PHD modeling.
• SAP S/4HANA integration exposure.
• LIMS/laboratory systems integration experience.
• Alarm rationalization and ISA-18.2 knowledge.
• Sensor validation and calibration workflow experience.
• HSE/EMIS or environmental reporting data exposure.
• ISA-62443, CCNA-Industrial, PI/AVEVA, Honeywell, or related industrial certifications.