Mgr Manufacturing IT Infrastructure

About the role

We are seeking a versatile and technical Manager of IT/OT Systems to own the infrastructure, software stack, and security posture that powers our manufacturing operations.

Responsibilities

• Help maintain the core computing infrastructure for plant operations.
• Manage the lifecycle of plant-floor software assets, including HMI PCs, industrial tablets, and ruggedized workstations.
• Oversee Active Directory structures, Group Policies (GPO), and DNS/DHCP services specifically tailored for manufacturing environments.
• Ensure high availability and disaster recovery readiness for all critical plant systems.
• Own the operational health of the manufacturing software stack (e.g., Ignition SCADA Gateways, Middleware/Kepware, Enterprise Labeling/Loftware).
• Lead the technical integration of Industry 4.0 initiatives, engineering the connectivity pipelines that move tag data from the factory floor to AWS and other enterprise systems.
• Support the SOTI MobiControl (MDM) environment, ensuring secure management of mobile devices used in production.
• Champion OT Cybersecurity standards, implementing network segmentation, secure remote access policies, and patch management strategies that respect production up-time requirements.
• Lead projects to modernize "brownfield" equipment, finding creative ways to extract data from legacy PLCs and get them connected to the modern IT network.
• Collaborate with Corporate InfoSec to translate enterprise security requirements into practical controls for the plant floor.
• Partner closely with Plant Engineering and Controls teams, using your high degree of PLC/SCADA literacy to troubleshoot complex connectivity and data acquisition issues.
• Drive the IT portion of capital projects, keeping the technical team on task and ensuring milestones for connectivity, testing, and go-live are met.
• Act as the technical escalation point for the team, helping to resolve Level 3 infrastructure impediments that are blocking production goals.
• Help with M&A actions for plant software.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• PREFERRED: Certifications in Microsoft Systems (Azure/Server), CISSP, ISA/IEC 62443 or Industrial Cybersecurity (GICSP).
• Experience: 10+ years of IT systems experience, with specific experience supporting manufacturing environments (Food & Beverage preferred).
• Systems Engineering: Strong hands-on experience with Windows Server administration, and general IT infrastructure management.
• PLC/SCADA Literacy: High familiarity with industrial automation architectures. Must understand how PLCs communicate (Ethernet/IP, Modbus) and how SCADA systems query data to troubleshoot connectivity effectively.
• OT Security: Solid understanding of OT InfoSec principles (Purdue Model, IEC 62443 concepts) and the unique challenges of securing industrial networks.
• Cloud & Data: Experience with cloud services (IoT Core, Greengrass, or S3) and data connectivity protocols (MQTT, OPC-UA).
• Brownfield Modernization: Proven ability to retrofit legacy plant environments with modern connectivity solutions without replacing the entire control system.
• Project Leadership: Experience leading technical initiatives and keeping a team focused on deliverables.
• Collaboration: A "Bridge Builder" mindset—you can speak "IT" to the server team and "OT" to the controls engineer.
• Problem Solving: Ability to troubleshoot complex systems that span across hardware, software, network, and cloud layers.

Qualifications

• Language: Bilingual (English/Spanish) is a strong plus to support a diverse workforce on the plant floor.
• IaC experience with ansible or terraform.

Benefits

• Medical, Prescription, Dental, & Vision – coverage beginning on your 1st day for eligible employees.
• Profit Sharing and 401(k) matching (after eligible criteria is met).
• Paid Vacation, Sick Time, and Holidays.
• Employee Appreciation Events and Employee Assistance Programs.
• Salary Base Range of $140,057.00 - $184,559.55*
• Annual bonus (based on the incentive program terms and conditions).

*The “base salary range” provided above is a good faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position in the specified markets. Ventura Foods reserves the right to pay outside of the given range based on a variety of factors including but not limited to: candidate skills and experience, complexity of the job, budgetary factors, and location/geography. Ventura Foods conducts regular reviews of compensation ranges and therefore reserves the right to alter this range at any given time.