Principal Lead - Plant Network Engineering

Position Summary:

The Principal Lead - Plant Network Engineering is a senior, hands-on leader responsible for all on-site plant network engineering and project delivery support across a major automotive manufacturer's North American manufacturing network, covering plants in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The scope is the plant IT network, including the IT/OT boundary. The role leads a team of on-site network engineers who are stationed at the most critical plants and cover surrounding plants as needed.

The Principal Lead leads the operating standards and performance of plant network engineering support, and represents the Plant Network Engineering function in cross-site architecture and standardization discussions. By staying close to each plant's operations, local requirements, and local policies, the Principal Lead brings the plant perspective into region-wide standards and ensures they can be implemented consistently at every site. Plant engineers continue to own day-to-day technical decisions within their assigned plants, while the Principal Lead sets cross-plant direction, standards, and priorities.

This position reports to the Manager and receives day-to-day direction from the customer's network technical leadership team. As a member of a Toyota group company, this position also drives continuous improvement (Kaizen) in plant network engineering services.

Essential Functions:

Description / Essential Functions:

• People Leadership
• Lead, coach, and develop on-site network engineers, building both technical depth and strong communication skills.
• Plan team coverage across the region, balancing assigned plants, coverage of surrounding plants, project demand, and incident response.
• Lead hiring and onboarding of on-site network engineers, and own their development plans and certification goals.
• Support Performance and Project Delivery Oversight
• Lead the delivery of on-site network engineering support across the North American region, aligning support processes and service levels across plants in coordination with the customer.
• Oversee and prioritize all on-site project delivery and production support across plants, including resource allocation, workload, and backlog.
• Define and manage KPIs and service performance, and deliver regular performance reports to the customer's network leadership and TTS management.
• Hold regular reviews with each plant engineer and drive continuous improvement of support quality.
• Technical Standards and Governance
• Lead the Plant Network Engineering function's participation in cross-site architecture and standardization discussions, representing plant requirements and operational realities.
• Maintain a current understanding of each plant's environment, local requirements, and local policies, and use it to shape practical region-wide standards.
• Develop and maintain plant network implementation standards, procedures, and documentation, including major outage response, maintenance windows, cutovers, and operational readiness.
• Provide expert guidance and escalation support to plant engineers on complex issues, designs, and changes, and translate business and production requirements into practical network solutions.
• Remain technically credible and hands-on, personally leading on-site work at plants during critical cutovers and major network incidents when needed.
• Stakeholder and Incident Leadership
• Serve as the primary point of communication for multi-plant or major network incidents; lead post-incident reviews and ensure lessons learned are applied across all plants.
• Advise the customer's network leadership on priorities, risks, resourcing, and technical direction for plant networks.
• Build trusted relationships with plant stakeholders across IT, OT, production engineering, maintenance, and operations.

Technology Scope:

The ideal candidate brings deep, hands-on expertise across enterprise and industrial networking technologies, such as:

• Cisco technologies including SD-Access, Cisco Catalyst Center (formerly DNA Center), Wireless, ISE, and ACI.
• SD-WAN networking, VLANs, routing, switching, and redundancy.
• Network security, firewalls, segmentation, secure connectivity, and IDMZ architecture.
• IT/OT boundary connectivity, including connections to plant-floor systems and edge-connected devices.
• Remote access and secure support patterns.
• Network monitoring, troubleshooting, and high-availability design.

Other Duties:

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive list of activities, duties, or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time, with or without notice.

Competencies:

• Ownership and accountability: Takes full responsibility for support quality and results across all plants.
• Technical leadership: Provides credible, expert guidance that engineers and stakeholders trust.
• Systems thinking: Balances region-wide standards with local plant realities and constraints.
• Influence and stakeholder management: Builds alignment across IT, OT, and plant stakeholders, including without direct authority.
• Composure under pressure: Leads decisively and communicates clearly during major incidents and critical cutovers.
• Communication: Communicates clearly with engineers, plant stakeholders, and leadership.
• People development: Coaches engineers and builds a capable, engaged, and resilient team.
• Honesty and integrity: Reports facts, issues, and risks openly and transparently.
• Adaptability and learning agility: Flexibly adapts to and absorbs Toyota culture and ways of working, with genuine interest in Japan or Toyota.
• Kaizen mindset: Constantly questions the current way of working and looks for improvements.

Supervisory Responsibility:

This position leads the team of on-site network engineers across the region and oversees all on-site plant network engineering and project delivery support, including partner resources as applicable.

Work Environment:

This is a hybrid role based in Plano, Texas. Work is performed in a professional office environment, which may include working remotely, as well as customer manufacturing plants, network / server rooms, and production areas. Plant safety requirements, including personal protective equipment (PPE), must be followed on site.

Physical Demands:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to stand, sit, stoop, walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms. Plant visits may require walking plant floors for extended periods. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.

Position Type/Expected Hours of Work:

This is a full-time position. Cutovers, maintenance windows, and major incident response may require evening, night, and weekend work as needed.

Travel:

This position requires regular travel to manufacturing plants across the United States, Canada, and Mexico for on-site leadership, critical cutovers, incident support, and stakeholder engagement, including overnight and multi-day trips. Travel to plants outside North America may also be required. Expected travel is approximately 20-40%; frequency varies by project and operational needs.

Requirements

Required Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+ years of progressive network engineering experience, including substantial hands-on work in enterprise and/or industrial network environments.
• 5+ years of experience leading network engineering teams, including senior engineers, with experience leading teams distributed across multiple sites.
• Proven track record of establishing or standardizing network services, standards, or operating models across multiple sites (e.g., plants or campuses).
• Experience supporting plant or manufacturing network environments, including the IT/OT boundary.
• Strong expertise in enterprise networking and secure network design, including IT/OT segmentation and IDMZ architecture.
• Experience managing network services with KPIs, service levels, capacity and workload planning, and service reporting.
• Experience leading major incident response and communicating status and business impact to customer leadership.
• Experience leading deployments, maintenance windows, and cutovers in high-availability production environments.
• Proven ability to collaborate across IT, OT, and manufacturing teams and to influence stakeholders without direct authority.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with technical, non-technical, and leadership audiences.
• Business-level proficiency in written and spoken English.
• Flexibility and openness to adapt to Toyota culture and ways of working, and interest in Japan or Toyota.
• Eligibility to travel internationally, including to Canada, Mexico, and other countries where the customer operates plants, and to re-enter the United States without restriction (valid passport required).

Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience in the automotive industry or other large-scale manufacturing.
• Familiarity with OT / industrial networks, automation, or controls systems and how they interface with IT networks.
• Background in large-scale plant network deployments or plant modernization.
• Experience working with production engineering, maintenance, and operations teams.
• Knowledge of Toyota Production System (TPS), Lean, or Kaizen methods, or experience with Japanese companies.
• Relevant certifications such as CCNP / CCIE, CISSP, or ISA/IEC 62443.