DigITAL Product Owner - MES

About the role

HARMAN Automotive is looking for a DigITAL Product Owner for Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to join its DigITAL Automotive Manufacturing team. You will own the MES product direction and lead the transformation from the current MES landscape to a new, standardized, traceable and efficient global MES platform. The role works closely with manufacturing engineering, operations, IT architects, project managers and regional teams.

Key responsibilities

• Define and maintain the MES product vision, roadmap, priorities and capability lifecycle.
• Translate business goals and plant needs into product epics, user stories and priorities.
• Own and refine the MES product backlog and plan and track milestones for rollout, migration and adoption.
• Balance global standardization with local plant requirements and work with IT architects so MES fits the broader Digital Manufacturing architecture (ERP, PLM, shopfloor systems, data platforms).
• Support decisions on scope, integration complexity, risks, sequencing and trade-offs, and prepare roadmap updates and risk summaries for leadership.
• Help define deployment approach, migration priorities, training and change management, and ensure sustainability after go-live.
• Monitor MES, smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 trends.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in IT, engineering, manufacturing, business informatics or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Strong experience with MES in a global, multi-site environment and with transformation programs, system replacement or global rollouts.
• Experience defining roadmaps, prioritizing requirements and managing backlogs.
• Ability to work in a multi-location, multicultural team; hybrid setup, with up to 10% travel.

Required skills

• Deep knowledge of MES capabilities: production execution, routing, work orders, product genealogy, traceability, quality control, equipment integration, reporting and shopfloor inventory.
• Experience with ERP, PLM, automation systems, reporting, analytics or data platforms connected to MES.
• Bonus: SAP ME, SAP MII, SAP Digital Manufacturing, Critical Manufacturing, Siemens Opcenter, Industry 4.0 concepts, REST APIs, OPC-UA, MQTT, Kafka, RabbitMQ, cloud/containerized platforms, KPI definition.

What we offer

• Hybrid work, with most office-based roles onsite three days a week.
• Employee discounts on HARMAN and Samsung products.