OT Enterprise Solutions Engineer in Sheffield

The OT Uplift and Standardisation programme is increasing in scale and complexity, creating a need for a single accountable architecture lead to establish the future state direction, align multiple contributing domains and translate the programme's strategic objectives into practical, deliverable designs.

The OT Enterprise Solutions Engineer will own the consolidation, development, articulation and ongoing evolution of the organisation's future-state Operational Technology architecture. The role will act as the lead OT architecture subject-matter expert, working within the existing established architecture governance and Technical Design Authority processes. It will bring together requirements and expertise from security, network, infrastructure, real estate services, engineering, technology operations and other relevant domains into a coherent, practical and deliverable enterprise architecture.

This is a hands-on delivery role. The successful candidate will be expected to rapidly translate complex requirements, competing stakeholder perspectives and industry standards into clearly documented architecture decisions, principles, patterns and designs. The individual will be the named accountable architecture lead for the OT domain. Other architecture and engineering disciplines will provide specialist input, but this role will retain end-to-end ownership for ensuring that the overall OT architecture is complete, integrated, realistic and aligned to our strategic and operational requirements.

The role will be supported by a Programme Delivery Lead who will coordinate planning, governance, milestones and dependencies. The Enterprise Solutions Engineer will remain accountable for the quality, completeness and delivery of the architecture outputs.

In this role, you will:

• Enterprise OT Architecture Ownership
  • Partner with Real Estate Services on the enterprise OT architecture vision, strategy and future-state architecture.
  • Establish a common architectural direction across OT, IT and cyber-physical environments.
  • Define how OT systems, networks, platforms, applications, devices, data and supporting services should operate together.
  • Ensure that architectural decisions consider operational availability, safety, resilience, security, maintainability and business requirements.
  • Act as the primary architecture authority for OT-related initiatives, designs and technology decisions.
  • Ensure that local, regional or domain-specific solutions align with the agreed enterprise direction while recognising legitimate operational differences.
• Architecture Development and Documentation
  • Personally develop and maintain the key architecture deliverables required by the programme.
  • Rapidly document current-state, transition-state and future-state architectures.
  • Produce clear and usable architecture principles, reference architectures, design patterns, standards, guardrails and decision records.
  • Develop architecture views that can be understood by technical specialists, programme teams, senior management and operational stakeholders.
  • Translate high-level strategic intent into implementable logical and physical architecture.
  • Define architectural requirements for connected, isolated, legacy, modernised and hybrid OT environments.
• IT and OT Convergence
  • Define appropriate architectural boundaries and integration points between IT, OT, IoT, edge, cloud and cyber-physical environments.
  • Identify where IT and OT capabilities can safely converge and where separation, segregation or specialist controls are required.
  • Define how enterprise services such as identity, network connectivity, observability, remote access, vulnerability management, backup, logging and incident management should be applied within OT environments.
  • Ensure that enterprise IT standards are appropriately adapted for OT operating conditions rather than applied without consideration of operational constraints.
  • Resolve areas of ambiguity or overlap between technology, cybersecurity, engineering, facilities and operational ownership.
• Security and IEC 62443 Alignment
  • Apply strong practical knowledge of IEC 62443 when developing enterprise OT architecture, reference patterns and design decisions.
  • Work with security architects and assurance teams to ensure that cybersecurity requirements are appropriately incorporated into the end-to-end OT architecture.
  • Translate specialist security requirements into practical OT design considerations, including zones and conduits, trust boundaries, segmentation, identity, remote access, observability, resilience and system lifecycle requirements.
  • Ensure security controls are proportionate, technically feasible and compatible with operational availability, safety, legacy technology and support constraints.
  • Identify and resolve conflicts or dependencies between security requirements and the wider network, infrastructure, engineering and operational architecture.
  • Clearly document security-related architecture assumptions, decisions, risks, exceptions and dependencies.
  • Challenge requirements that are unsuitable for OT environments while ensuring that legitimate security outcomes are maintained.