Value Architect, Industry 4.0

A senior industrial data and IT/OT expert who turns operational data into results, advising our key clients from strategy through delivery.

Do you enjoy working with industrial data and AI, where OT meets IT and data becomes operational results? Are you equally at home advising senior client stakeholders with a strategic vision and roadmap and, as lead architect, staying hands-on through the work that delivers it? If your answer is yes, then we are looking for you, Value Architect, to join our growing Data & AI Studio.

At Nortal, we build solutions and services that bring real value to users and society as a whole. In Finland, we have nearly 200 employees, and internationally we operate in over 20 countries. Our Data & AI Studio brings together strategy, engineering, and AI to help industrial enterprises turn operational data into results, bridging OT and IT from the shop floor to the cloud, and moving from discovery to scalable, production-grade solutions.

As a Value Architect, Industry 4.0 in our Data & AI Studio, you are a senior subject-matter expert and the trusted advisor industrial clients lean on to turn operational data into results. This is primarily a client-facing role. You work with senior stakeholders on where unified industrial data and AI turn cost into advantage, which investments return the most in uptime, quality, and decision speed, and which team should deliver them. You own the architecture across the IT and OT boundary and stay hands-on through delivery. A smaller part of the role helps the practice grow: you support presales when your expertise is needed, feed what you learn back into our industrial offering, and now and then share it through talks and writing. One morning you frame the business case with a VP of operations. That afternoon you review an edge-to-cloud architecture with the engineers who will build it.

The offering you will work with
Our work in this space turns industrial data into operational results. Most industrial enterprises want to scale AI but cannot, because fragmented OT and IT systems and inconsistent data quality leave them without a foundation to build on. We fix that first.

You take the lead on engagements like our Industrial Data & AI Kickstart and the platform and use-case work that grows out of it. You own them as the lead architect: facilitating the workshops, conducting a significant share of the analysis and design yourself, and bringing in specific experts, from IT/OT and cloud to integration and data and AI, where deeper specialism is needed.

This is operations-first work. It runs from the shop floor to the cloud, bridges OT and IT, and is grounded in real operational needs rather than slideware. You start here, sharpen the offering as you run it, and help shape what comes next.

What you will do
This is primarily a client-facing role.

Advise clients and protect the value

• Be the trusted advisor. Work with senior client stakeholders (heads of operations and manufacturing, plant and maintenance leaders, CDOs and CIOs) to connect their priorities to data and AI outcomes, and shape strategies and roadmaps they can act on.
• Run the Kickstart. Lead the discovery and design workshops, assess the as-is OT and IT landscape, and produce the edge-to-cloud target architecture, the governance and operating model, and the roadmap the client executes against.
• Own the architecture. Steer architecture and design decisions across the IT and OT boundary so solutions scale and stay governed, secure, and compliant. You need not ship every integration yourself, but you stand behind the design.
• Stay through delivery. Don’t hand off after the Kickstart. Stay hands-on through platform foundation and use-case pilots to protect the architecture, data governance, quality, and the value case into production.

Contribute to the offering and the practice

A smaller part of the role looks inward. You support presales when your expertise is needed, handle the hard technical objections, and help shape proposals and value cases. You turn what you learn on engagements into reusable patterns and proof points, and you share some of it through talks and writing. You mentor others and help run AI-aware delivery teams, so the practice grows beyond any one person.

What we hope you bring

• A senior background in manufacturing operations management and industrial data with business acumen (IT/OT or IIoT Architect, Industrial Data Architect, MES/MOM Lead, or similar), with ten or more years on the consulting or customer side.
• Domain depth. Working knowledge of more than one industry or industry type we serve is required, so you can speak the customer’s language from day one. Experience in both process and discrete industries, such as metals, forest, energy, packaging, chemical, or machine building, is especially welcome.
• A track record of growing trusted client relationships and turning advice into delivered work, with real ownership of the outcome rather than the handover.
• Consultative mindset. You lead with the customer’s operational problem, not with technology. You listen, frame the real question, and guide senior stakeholders to a decision they own. Enterprise architecture skills and experience are a strong asset here, connecting business strategy, operating model, data, and technology into one coherent picture.
• Industrial platform familiarity. Comfortable across the industrial stack, from shop floor to cloud: IT/OT integration, MES/MOM, process historians, edge and connectivity tooling, OPC UA and UNS architectures, data analytics over time-series data, and standards such as ISA-95/88. You are familiar with OT infrastructure, networking, and security, and with architecting containerized workloads at the edge. On the cloud side, you are comfortable with modern data stacks such as Azure IoT, Microsoft Fabric, and Databricks. Relevant certifications are a plus.
• Applied AI. Experience with machine learning solutions deployed in production (beyond PoC scope) for areas such as production, maintenance, quality, and warehouse optimization. GenAI solutions in production are a plus.
• Communication. Strong spoken, written, and presentation skills in Finnish and English, with the ability to reach shop floor engineers, enterprise architects, and operations leaders. German is an asset.
• AI-first ways of working. Comfortable using modern AI tools in your own work, with coding agents a plus. You work AI-first by habit, not by exception.

Why join us

• Work where data meets the shop floor. Real plants and real operations, from the Kickstart through to production, not perpetual pilots. You see the architecture you stand behind actually run.
• A community, not a silo. A multidisciplinary network behind you, from IT/OT, cloud, and integration architects to data and AI specialists, and delivery teams who can actually ship what you design.
• Sell from strength. Twenty-five years of industrial delivery, with experience in industrial digitalization dating back to 1987 and long-standing work with metals, energy, and forest clients. We are a Featured Microsoft Fabric Partner and one of the very few partners named in Microsoft’s Industrial AI Partner Guide.

Salary range: 5900-8800€ / month (full-time). Final compensation will depend on factors such as relevant experience, role seniority, and skill set.

Please note that we will begin reviewing applications in week 31.

If you’re interested in learning more, please feel free to reach out to me for additional information:
Virpi Kivinen
+358 40 6616 338
virpi.kivinen(at)nortal.com 
 
Nortal values equality and diversity in our work community. We welcome applicants with different backgrounds, such as in regard to age, gender, culture or minority group. 
 
 
 
#LI-Hybrid