Global Manager - Automation & Innovation - CL

The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company is seeking a highly proactive Global Automation & Innovation Manager to lead automation enablement across Europe. You will translate pain points into scalable automation initiatives, develop playbooks and reference architectures, and drive regional communities through workshops and site engagement.

Ideal candidates will have 8+ years in warehouse automation, strong stakeholder influence skills, and a track record of cross-country

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in mechanical engineering, Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain Engineering, or similar discipline.
• Minimum 8 years experience in warehouse automation, warehouse operations, or related field.
• Experience evaluating automation technologies such as AMRs, ASRS, robotics, conveyors, sortation, or inventory automation systems, computer vision.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication capability; ability to influence initiatives without direct authority.
• Experience working across multiple countries and operational environments.
• Willingness to travel extensively across Europe and internationally.

Responsibilities

• Drive regional engagement around automation and innovation initiatives.
• Support and contribute to the regional automation enablement strategy and capability development.
• Operationalize global automation standards, playbooks, and solution blueprints.
• Lead regional Automation & Innovation communities and collaborative workshops.
• Identify scalable automation opportunities from operational pain points and translate into concrete deployments.
• Bridge regional operations with vendors, site teams, engineering, and global strategy.
• Support deployment of validated automation solutions and governance across the region.

Skills

Stakeholder management

Cross-country collaboration

Strategic thinking

Communication

Influence without authority

Project leadership

Proactive mindset

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in mechanical/industrial/supply chain engineering

Tools

AMRs

ASRS

Robotics

Conveyors

Sensors and computer vision

Job description

Job Purpose:

We are seeking a highly proactive and technically credible professional to join the Global Contract Logistics team as a Global Automation & Innovation Manager. The role will act as the automation enabler with primary responsibility for Europe while supporting automation enablement, standards adoption, and strategic initiatives across other regions globally as required.
The successful candidate will support the transition from isolated automation projects toward a scalable enablement model based on standardization, reusable playbooks, operational workshops, and structured regional collaboration.
The role combines technical automation expertise with stakeholder influence, regional engagement, operational discovery, and strategic enablement. The ideal candidate must be capable of identifying operational pain points, translating them into scalable automation opportunities, mobilizing regional stakeholders, and driving initiatives through influence rather than formal authority.

Key Accountabilities:

• Drive regional engagement around automation and innovation initiatives.

• Support and contribute to the regional automation enablement strategy, standards adoption, and capability development aligned with the global automation roadmap.

• Support the operationalization of global automation standards, playbooks, and solution blueprints.

• Lead regional Automation & Innovation communities.

• Identify scalable operational pain points and translate them into structured automation opportunities.

• Act as the bridge between regional operations, vendors, site teams, engineering, and the global innovation strategy.

• Support scalable deployment and adoption of validated automation solutions.

• Provide leadership and governance for automation enablement activities across the region, ensuring alignment with global standards, priorities, and strategic objectives.

• Support the development and operationalization of standard automation playbooks, solution templates, and reference architectures.

• Lead and the Global Automation & Innovation communities through workshops, site engagement, recurring reviews, and structured collaboration.

• Proactively engage with regional operations, engineering teams, and sites to identify operational pain points and automation opportunities across countries and verticals.

• Own adoption, utilization, and continuous improvement of the Global Automation Library, automation playbooks, solution templates, and reference architectures across the region.

• Lead automation enablement activities supporting strategic RFQs, customer opportunities, renewals, and brownfield assessments to strengthen solution differentiation and win probability.Translate operational requirements into scalable automation concepts and high-level layouts.

• Lead the transition of validated proof-of-concepts into repeatable deployment models through the development of playbooks, standards, business cases, deployment roadmaps, and regional adoption plans.

• Define boundary conditions, site readiness criteria, integration considerations, and deployment frameworks required to scale validated automation solutions globally.

• Liaise with internal and external stakeholders to improve alignment, visibility, and follow-through across automation initiatives.

• Facilitate automation workshops and operational discovery sessions with sites and regional teams.

• Capture operational insights and validated solutions to continuously strengthen the automation standards framework.

• Evaluate warehouse automation technologies and challenge vendor proposals from both technical and operational perspectives.

• Represent the organization during customer meetings, vendor workshops, and industry events.

• Collaborate with global teams on future technologies including robotics, sensors, computer vision, and physical AI applications.

• Support integration readiness discussions for scalable deployment of automation solutions.

• Operate independently with minimal supervision while maintaining strong alignment with strategic direction.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

Required Experience & Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in mechanical engineering, Industrial Engineering, Supply Chain Engineering, or similar discipline.
• Strong experience in warehouse automation, mechanization, fulfillment engineering, or logistics operations (min 8 years in warehouse automation)
• Practical understanding of brownfield operations and warehouse process constraints.
• Experience evaluating automation technologies such as AMRs, ASRS, robotics, conveyors, sortation, or inventory automation systems, computer vision.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication capability.
• Ability to influence initiatives without direct authority.
• Experience working across multiple countries and operational environments.
• Good understanding of automation solutioning and Implementation, vendor evaluation, and operational business cases.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous and fast-moving innovation environments.
• Abilitiy to collect required data and build compelling business cases with demonstrated ROI
• Willingness to travel extensively across Europe and internationally.

Technical & Functional Capabilities

• Warehouse automation and mechanization understanding
• Brownfield retrofit assessment
• Automation solution concept development
• Vendor and technology evaluation
• Operational workshop facilitation
• Automation standardization and playbook thinking
• Automation Library / Product Catalogue contribution
• PoC support and scalability assessment
• Stakeholder engagement and community building
• Operational ROI and value-based thinking
• Integration readiness awareness
• Physical AI and emerging automation technology awareness

Key Behavioral Profile

• Highly proactive and self-driven
• Strong relationship builder
• Comfortable initiating conversations and building engagement with sites and operations teams
• Able to balance technical credibility with practical business understanding
• Operates effectively without heavy supervision
• Able to create momentum and maintain follow-through across initiatives
• Strong communication and storytelling capability
• Curious, adaptable, and operationally minded