MES Architect

United States Steel Corporation (U.S. Steel) is seeking an MES Architect to provide enterprise functional and technical leadership for Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), ensuring that shopfloor systems enable operational excellence, digital manufacturing, and future AI driven capabilities. This role bridges manufacturing operations, IT, and OT, translating production realities into scalable, resilient MES architectures that support safety, quality, throughput, and continuous improvement.

The MES Architect is a critical enabler of the organization's evolution toward connected, data driven, and increasingly autonomous manufacturing operations and a way from our technical debt. This role defines and governs the enterprise MES architecture and roadmap, balancing global standardization with site-level flexibility while modernizing legacy implementations into modular, interoperable, and future-ready platforms. The architect ensures MES solutions integrate seamlessly with ERP, automation, quality, maintenance, planning, and data platforms - creating a cohesive digital manufacturing ecosystem.

In addition to architectural leadership, the MES Architect partners closely with manufacturing, engineering, quality, and IT leaders to align system capabilities with real operational needs. By ensuring MES platforms generate high-quality, contextualized production data, this role enables advanced analytics, AI/ML use cases, and digital transformation initiatives that support U.S. Steel's ambition of becoming the best steelmaker with world-leading capabilities.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES The responsibilities of the position include, but are not limited to, the following:

Manufacturing Process Enablement

• Partner closely with Manufacturing, Quality, S&OP, Engineering, and Operations leaders to translate production processes into effective MES capabilities.
• Ensure MES supports core manufacturing use cases such as production execution, work instructions, quality checks, genealogy, traceability, and electronic records.
• Align MES capabilities to corporate strategy "Becoming the Best Steelmaker with World-Leading Capabilities" Lean, Six Sigma, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Data, Integration & Digital Manufacturing

• Ensure MES architecture produces high-quality, contextualized manufacturing data suitable for analytics, AI, and digital twins.
• Define integration patterns that enable real time and near real time data flow between shop floor systems and enterprise platforms.
• Partner with Data and AI teams to ensure MES data is complete, accurate, and usable for advanced analytics and AI/ML use cases.
• Support latency and availability requirements for mission critical manufacturing operations.

Reliability, Resilience & Compliance

• Ensure MES solutions meet stringent requirements for uptime, fault tolerance, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance.
• Incorporate operational risk, safety, and quality considerations into architectural decisions.
• Support auditability and compliance requirements through robust system design and data integrity.

Delivery & Vendor Leadership

• Provide architectural leadership to internal delivery teams and external system integrators.
• Evaluate and guide MES vendor and platform selections based on long-term enterprise fit.
• Ensure implementations align with architectural standards while meeting real operational needs.

Leadership Expectations

• Act as a trusted advisor to manufacturing, operations, and IT leadership on MES strategy and tradeoffs.
• Lead through expertise, influence, and collaboration rather than positional authority.
• Mentor engineers, analysts, and architects to build durable MES and digital manufacturing capability.
• Balance long-term architectural integrity with near-term operational realities.
• Define criteria for multi-cloud vs. single-cloud strategies based on risk, performance, and business value.
• Align vendor roadmaps with enterprise architecture direction and modernization timelines.

Teamwork & Collaboration

• Establish SRE and reliability engineering practices, including SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets.
• Define disaster recovery, backup, and business continuity strategies across critical workloads.
• Embed security controls aligned to regulatory and compliance requirements (e.g., zero-trust principles).
• Lead vulnerability management, patching strategies, and continuous security posture assessment.
• Implement automated testing and validation of infrastructure and platform configurations.
• Drive root cause analysis and continuous improvement following incidents.
• Promote a culture of operational excellence, automation, and proactive risk management.

Domain Knowledge & Problem Solving

• Deep understanding of manufacturing operations, production processes, and shop floor constraints.
• Strong knowledge of MES platforms, industrial systems, and OT/IT integration patterns.
• Ability to diagnose complex production issues by understanding how systems, processes, and people interact.
• Applies domain expertise pragmatically to design solutions that work in real-world manufacturing environments.

Mindset & Cultural Expectations

• Demonstrates a nonhierarchical, inclusive, and respectful mindset, valuing insights from those closest to the work.
• Leads with humility, curiosity, and a service-oriented approach to operations.
• Respects the realities of manufacturing environments while enabling transformation.
• Champions continuous learning, standardization where it adds value, and flexibility where it is required.

Do you have experience in Technical writing within technology?, * Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline (or equivalent practical experience).

• 7+ years of experience developing and architecting enterprise software solutions.
• Demonstrated expertise in creating architectural artifacts, including:
• Context diagrams
• System overviews
• Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs)
• Data flow diagrams
• System interaction diagrams
• 3+ years of direct experience working with MES and/or supply chain platforms within a manufacturing environment.
• Demonstrated experience designing and supporting MES solutions that integrate with ERP, automation/OT systems, quality, maintenance, and planning platforms.
• Strong exposure to application architecture within a .NET environment, including C# and related frameworks.
• Solid experience with SQL and relational database design (e.g., Oracle or similar enterprise databases).
• Proven ability to create clear, comprehensive technical documentation for software and system architectures.
• Experience leading or significantly contributing to cross-functional technology projects in complex, operationally sensitive environments.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing processes, shopfloor operations, and the constraints of asset-intensive production environments.
• Experience modernizing legacy applications toward more modular, scalable, and maintainable architectures.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to engage both technical teams and operational stakeholders.
• Demonstrated potential for technical leadership, including influencing design decisions and mentoring engineers or analysts.

The following is preferred for this role:

• Metals manufacturing (steel preferred).
• Knowledge of ISA-95 standards and manufacturing integration frameworks.
• Experience with containerization and microservices architectures.
• Experience with streaming technologies and Unified Namespace (UNS) (e.g., Kafka, MQTT).
• DevOps practices and CI/CD pipeline implementation.
• Experience with Oracle DB, Redis, and enterprise database environments.
• UI/UX development exposure (Figma, React, Angular, or Vue).
• Experience supporting AI/ML initiatives and broader digital transformation programs.
• Experience working in an offshore or global delivery model.
• Experience leveraging GenAI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Anima) to develop and architect solutions.
• PL/SQL and/or Java experience.
• MongoDB experience.
• Python experience.

United States Steel Corporation (U.S. Steel), founded in 1901, is a leading American steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was the world's first billion-dollar corporation, formed through a merger involving J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Charles Schwab, and Elbert H. Gary. The company has been pivotal in supplying steel for U.S. infrastructure, military needs, and economic growth. In 2025, U.S. Steel finalized a historic $14 billion partnership with Nippon Steel Corporation, retaining its name, U.S. headquarters, and "made in America" status. This deal enhances its capabilities through shared expertise in advanced steelmaking. The 2021 acquisition of Big River Steel marked its shift toward sustainable, low-emission mini-mill operations. U.S. Steel operates integrated mills (blast furnaces) and mini-mills (electric arc furnaces), producing 17-20 million tons of steel annually. It employs around 20,000-25,000 people and serves industries like automotive, construction, energy, and appliances. Specialties include Integrated Steel Production, Steel Process & Product Technology, Steel Development Research, Coke (Fuel) Production; Iron Ore Mining, Industries: Automotive, Oil & Gas, Appliance, Container, Industrial Machinery & Construction, Sustainable Steel, Electric Arc Furnace, green steel, and electrical steel.