Industrial IT Operations Manager

The French Sourcer; Neuenburg; On-site; CHF 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

The French Sourcer in Neuchâtel region, Switzerland, seeks a seasoned IT Operations leader to own production-critical systems and guide a five-person team on-site.

You will oversee MES and equipment integration, collaborate with Manufacturing, Engineering and Quality, drive governance, and push cloud-native improvements in Azure while keeping hands-on coding in C#.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in IT with strong industrial/manufacturing experience.
• Proven IT operations for production-critical systems with ISA-95 knowledge.
• Hands-on software development in C# with complex apps.
• Cloud-native architectures, Azure preferred.
• PMI and Agile certifications; fluent English and professional French; German a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead a small team of five senior IT Operations experts with clear priorities.
• Run MES and equipment integration systems in production where downtime costs.
• Share software architecture duties with IT Architect; stay hands-on in design and code.
• Define IT Operations governance: incident, problem and change management.
• Act as main IT contact for Manufacturing, Engineering and Quality on MES and shopfloor IT.
• Deliver multiple operational IT projects in parallel with risk control.
• Manage external partners and SLAs, ensuring service quality and costs.

Skills

C# programming

IT operations

Cloud technologies

Education

Engineering degree

Master's in CS

Tools

Azure

Job description

Neuchâtel region, Switzerland · Permanent, 80% to 100% · On-site

Keep production-critical manufacturing systems stable while staying hands-on on the architecture and code that change them.

What you'd actually work on

• Leading a small team of five very senior IT Operations experts, setting clear priorities and a workload people can sustain over time
• Running the Manufacturing Execution Systems (ISA-95 Level 3) and equipment integration systems (Level 2) in a production environment where downtime has a direct cost
• Sharing software architecture responsibilities with the IT Architect, and staying hands-on in design and development work
• Defining and enforcing IT Operations governance, with incident, problem and change management, and reducing downtime and technical debt over time
• Acting as the main IT contact for Manufacturing, Engineering and Quality on MES, shopfloor IT and equipment integration
• Delivering several operational IT projects in parallel (MES, RMS, CMMS, APS), with clear priorities, capacity planning and risk control
• Managing external partners and system integrators, including SLAs, service quality and costs

Where it gets technically interesting

• Clear ownership boundaries between equipment (L1), automation (L2), MES (L3) and business systems (L4), where most hard incidents happen at the interfaces
• Production-critical systems that cannot simply be taken offline, so every change needs careful sequencing and rollback plans
• Ongoing cloud architecture and improvement projects on Azure, designed with cloud-native patterns
• A small, very senior team where the leader stays close to the code and helps design and build complex applications in C#

What we're looking for

• An engineering degree or a Master's in Computer Science or a close technical field
• 15+ years in IT, with significant experience in industrial and manufacturing environments
• A strong track record in IT Operations for production-critical systems, with a practical understanding of ISA-95 layers and interfaces
• Significant hands-on software development experience, ideally in C#, with a track record of designing and building complex applications
• Strong software architecture skills and experience with cloud-native technologies, Azure preferred
• Experience managing several operational projects at once, with PMI and Agile certifications
• Fluent English and professional French, with German as a plus

The company

A Swiss semiconductor company that designs and manufactures ultra-low-power integrated circuits on its own production site, part of a large international industrial group. The Industrial IT team, five senior experts, reports to the IT Manager and works closely with Manufacturing, Engineering and Quality. The role is fully on-site.