Senior Manager Manufacturing Engineering

Senior Manager - Digital Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)

Required Skills & Experience

• Twelve or more years in manufacturing IT/OT, including at least eight years delivering MES in semiconductor, electronics or comparably complex environments.
• Five or more years leading globally distributed teams and multi-vendor programmes, with direct accountability for budget and for benefits realization.
• At least one legacy MES modernization delivered on a live production line, and at least one greenfield or major new-site deployment.
• Working depth in at least two MES environments, of which one is a commercial platform and one is custom or in-house engineered.
• Production-grade AI or advanced analytics in manufacturing operations that you deployed, monitored and owned after go-live.
• ISA-95 and ISA-88 as an operating discipline rather than a diagram, together with practical command of equipment integration, recipe management, dispatching and genealogy or traceability.
• Commercial acumen across RFx, contracts and vendor governance; credible executive communication; a degree in engineering, computer science or a related discipline; fluent English.

Nice to Have Skills & Experience

• Direct experience with semiconductor, advanced packaging or specialty-materials process flows; working Korean or Mandarin, given the site footprint.
• Operator copilots or agentic assistants running in production; digital-thread or digital-twin programmes; low-code platforms.
• Certifications such as PMP, SAFe, TOGAF, ISA-95, ISA/IEC 62443, or cloud and AI credentials; a Master's degree or MBA.
• Regulated-quality environments including ISO 9001, IATF 16949, AS9100 or GxP; participation in SEMI, MESA or the OPC Foundation.

Job Description

A global electronics and semiconductor manufacturing company is seeking a highly skilled Senior Manager to support ongoing initiatives related to digital manufacturing execution systems. This individual will define and execute the enterprise MES strategy across our global manufacturing network, and own the vision, architecture, roadmap and end-to-end delivery of modern MES capability in a deliberately hybrid landscape. Commercial products, custom-built systems and legacy assets each hold a place here, chosen on the merits of the problem rather than by policy. You will lead a fit-for-purpose approach: commercial platforms where they accelerate time-to-value, and custom or in-house engineering where differentiated process knowledge, speed of iteration or unique manufacturing physics demand it. You will also make manufacturing operations genuinely AI-enabled by embedding intelligence into MES workflows, decisions and the operator experience. This position is based in Wilmington, DE and will require 3 days a week onsite with occasional travel with a target base salary range of $188K - $200K + potential bonus opportunity depending on experience.

The Core Tension of This Role

We are stating this openly because it is the work. This person must preserve and modernize in-house assets that encode proprietary process expertise, while standardizing enough — on data models, integration contracts, identity, observability, security and DevOps — to move quickly across a global network. Those two obligations pull against each other every quarter, and they are resolved through judgement, not through a reference architecture. Candidates who do not recognize this tension, or who resolve it with a blanket rule in either direction, have not done this job.