Senior MES Architect – OneFab Platform

About the role

At imec, you will be the architectural owner of OneFab: a mission‑critical MES platform that orchestrates end‑to‑end manufacturing and R&D execution across a large, integration‑heavy ecosystem. 
You will create and maintain architectural coherence while enabling delivery speed—by making trade‑offs explicit, reducing accidental complexity, and building a platform that remains stable, operable, and evolvable. 

What you will do

• Own the end‑to‑end architecture for the MES domain (target architecture, principles, standards, and decision records) 
• Define and enforce architectural guardrails for scalability, reliability, observability, security, and operability 
• Lead architecture and design reviews across internal and external deliveries; provide the technical ‘go/no‑go’ when architectural integrity is at risk 
• Shape and govern key integration choices (APIs, messaging, event flows, data contracts) across MES, equipment integration, and legacy coexistence 
• Drive the platform roadmap: modularization, boundaries, deprecation strategy, and reduction of structural bottlenecks and single‑points‑of‑failure 
• Partner with QA/release and platform stakeholders to ensure architectures are testable, deployable, and supportable at scale 

You will also operate as a technical leader who can go deep when it matters—especially when the ‘hard problems’ appear in production or at system boundaries. 

• Serve as escalation point for complex cross‑system defects and recurring production issues; drive root‑cause analysis to structural fixes 
• Improve engineering discipline: fail‑fast design, shift‑left testing mindset, and pragmatic documentation that teams actually use 
• Coach analysts and developers in systems thinking, debugging maturity, and making integration behavior explicit 

What we do for you

We offer you the opportunity to join one of the world’s premier research centers in nanotechnology at its headquarters in Leuven, Belgium. With your talent, passion and expertise, you’ll become part of a team that makes the impossible possible. Together, we shape the technology that will determine the society of tomorrow.

We are committed to being an inclusive employer and proud of our open, multicultural, and informal working environment with ample possibilities to take initiative and show responsibility. We commit to supporting and guiding you in this process; not only with words but also with tangible actions. Through imec.academy, 'our corporate university', we actively invest in your development to further your technical and personal growth. 

We are aware that your valuable contribution makes imec a top player in its field. Your energy and commitment are therefore appreciated by means of a market appropriate salary with many fringe benefits. 

Who you are

• Senior architect with proven ownership of complex, long‑lived enterprise platforms (MES/manufacturing IT is a plus, but not required) 
• Strong systems thinker: comfortable reasoning across application logic, integrations, data models, operational behavior, and failure modes 
• Hands‑on mindset: you can dive into technical investigations, read logs, trace flows, and unblock teams when needed 
• Able to drive decisions and alignment across multiple teams and stakeholders, including external delivery organizations 
• Pragmatic: you balance long‑term sustainability with short‑term constraints and can articulate trade‑offs clearly.

Nice to have: experience modernizing legacy ecosystems, shaping platform roadmaps, or leading architecture governance in multi-team environments. 
You will work in a landscape where small architectural decisions can have large operational impact—yet delivery pressure is real. The opportunity is to create clarity, reduce risk, and build an architecture that scales with the organization and its ambitions. 

What you can expect

• High autonomy and clear ownership scope 
• A complex, high-impact domain with real-world constraints 
• Collaboration across product, engineering, operations, and platform teams 
• The chance to turn complexity into a coherent, sustainable system 

IMEC and its affiliates will not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from a candidate. IMEC will consider unsolicited referrals and/or resumes submitted by vendors such as search firms, staffing agencies, professional recruiters, fee-based referral services and recruiting agencies (hereafter “Agency”) to have been referred by the Agency free of charge. IMEC will not pay a fee to any Agency that does not have a prior written agreement with IMEC, validated by its HR department, in place regarding a specific job opening and allowing to submit resumes.