Senior Director - Digital Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)

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.

Core Capabilities - What Decides This Hire

These five capabilities carry the weight of the assessment. Platform familiarity and certifications are secondary and are addressed later; what follows is what we will probe in depth, and what we expect to see demonstrated through specific work you personally owned.

1. Build-versus-buy judgement you have been accountable for

The sourcing decision is the spine of this role. We are looking for someone who has repeatedly weighed differentiation, total cost of ownership, change agility, supplier viability and the value of internal intellectual property, and who then lived with the consequences of the call. The strongest candidates hold a considered position and can also say where that position has been wrong.

Evidence we will look for: a specific commercial-versus-custom decision you made, the reasoning at the time, and an honest account of how it looked two or three years later. A universal answer in either direction is a disqualifying signal.

1. Legacy modernization on a running line

Greenfield deployment is the easier half of this work and is rarely what this role will face. The scarce capability is incremental migration - strangler-fig or equivalent - of a system the plant depends on hour by hour, without stopping production or eroding traceability. This is where most MES programmes fail, and where we weight experience most heavily.

Evidence we will look for: your cutover strategy and rollback plan, what actually broke, how much production time was lost, and what you changed in the next wave as a result.

1. IT/OT boundary fluency, demonstrated rather than stated

Nearly every candidate claims ISA-95. Far fewer have negotiated a change window with a process engineer who does not trust IT, or defended a segmentation decision against a vendor who wanted flat network access to the shop floor. We are interested in how you hold an OT-grade line under commercial and schedule pressure.

Evidence we will look for: a concrete disagreement with Manufacturing, Controls or a supplier over access, change control or downtime, and how it was resolved.

1. AI in production, with the accountability that follows

We are not looking for proofs of concept. We are looking for models and AI-assisted workflows that ran against a real line, with a named owner, defined human-in-the-loop controls, drift monitoring and a change-control path. Knowing when to switch something off matters here as much as knowing how to deploy it.

Evidence we will look for: a model or copilot that operated in production, who owned it after go-live, what the human control actually was, and whether it was ever withdrawn and why. Vendor-led pilots do not count.

1. Multi-site delivery across genuinely divergent sites

Wilmington, Cheonan and Hsinchu carry three regulatory contexts, three engineering cultures and three working languages. Rollouts fail at the point where a site with legitimate local reasons resists a global standard. We want someone who has navigated that without either capitulating to every exception or steamrolling the site into compliance.

Evidence we will look for: a rollout where one site pushed back hard, what you standardized anyway, what you allowed to remain local, and how you defended both choices afterwards., Strategy and Architecture

• Define and evolve the multi-year MES strategy and ISA-95-aligned reference architecture supporting the Industry 4.0 and digital-thread agenda.
• Establish and govern a fit-for-purpose sourcing framework that guides commercial, custom and configuration decisions case by case.
• Preserve and modernize strategic in-house assets that encode proprietary process expertise, while standardizing where it pays, without forcing convergence onto a single MES product.
• Architect for composable MES: stable cores complemented by best-fit specialized modules and custom extensions.

Solution Delivery

• Own delivery end to end, from discovery through hypercare into run and maintain, using DevOps and product-team operating models.
• Maintain distinct playbooks for commercial implementations, custom builds and legacy modernization, rather than one process stretched across all three.
• Manage scope, schedule, budget, risk and benefits realization across concurrent global rollouts, and set engineering standards, CI/CD and OT-grade change control for both configuration and custom code.

AI Enablement of Manufacturing Operations

• Define and execute the AI-for-Manufacturing roadmap in step with the MES roadmap, targeting yield, throughput, quality, maintenance, scheduling and energy.
• Embed machine learning and generative AI directly into MES workflows: intelligent dispatching, anomaly detection, virtual metrology, run-to-run control, recipe optimization and automated root-cause analysis.
• Enable copilot and agentic experiences for operators, engineers and supervisors, with explainability and human-in-the-loop control as design requirements rather than additions.
• Establish responsible-AI practice for the shop floor covering validation, drift monitoring, change control and traceability, and ensure MES is a first-class producer and consumer of the manufacturing data fabric.

Integration, Data and Cybersecurity

• Architect integration across MES, ERP, PLM, QMS, LIMS, WMS, process control, historians and equipment-data systems, and drive adoption of the relevant SEMI standards.
• Ensure OT cybersecurity, AI governance, business continuity and 24x7 resilience for systems the shop floor cannot operate without.

Team and Stakeholders

• Build and lead a globally distributed team of architects, engineers, business analysts and product owners, alongside a multi-vendor ecosystem of platform suppliers, integrators, AI partners and managed-service providers.
• Partner with Manufacturing, Quality, Supply Chain, IT/OT Security and Data & AI, communicate strategy and value to executive leadership, and lead the change management that AI-assisted operations demands.

We are a company committed to creating diverse and inclusive environments where people can bring their full, authentic selves to work every day. We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer that believes everyone matters. Qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment regardless of their race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status, national origin, ancestry, genetic factors, age, disability, protected veteran status, military or uniformed service member status, or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please send a request to HR@insightglobal.com.To learn more about how we collect, keep, and process your private information, please review Insight Global’s Workforce Privacy Policy: https://insightglobal.com/workforce-privacy-policy/.

• 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. - 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.