Enterprise MES Technical Lead

The Digital Thread Systems team, within our Chief Information Office and reporting through our Digital sector, is seeking an Enterprise MES Technical Lead to help scale Leidos manufacturing for the future by modernizing the systems, integrations, and infrastructure that connect product development to product realization. Our team enables the digital thread that moves critical product and manufacturing information across engineering, planning, and production – helping teams turn product designs into producible, deliverable solutions. You will serve as the technical subject matter expert for the enterprise Manufacturing Execution System and its supporting technology environment. The role is responsible for the administration, configuration, technical health, performance, maintenance, and production support of MES capabilities that enable manufacturing operations. This position provides technical leadership for MES implementations, upgrades, deployments, integrations, and production issue resolution while ensuring the platform remains reliable, supportable, and aligned with enterprise technology standards. The Technical Lead works across Manufacturing Engineering, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, business applications, infrastructure, cybersecurity, suppliers, and other technology teams to sustain and evolve the enterprise MES capability. Location: This position allows for full-time telework from any U.S. based location. Citizenship: US Citizenship is required. Primary Responsibilities MES Administration & Configuration Serve as a technical subject matter expert for the enterprise MES platform and supporting technology environment. Administer and configure MES capabilities supporting workflows, manufacturing plans, bills of material, work instructions, production records, data collection, material traceability, and user access. Maintain system configurations, application settings, permissions, interfaces, and supporting technical components. Monitor system health, performance, capacity, logs, jobs, databases, and data integrity and proactively address technical issues. Support application patching, upgrades, environment maintenance, backup/recovery, and lifecycle management activities. Implementation, Deployment & Integration Provide technical leadership for MES implementations, upgrades, configuration changes, testing, deployment, go-live, and hypercare. Translate functional requirements into viable technical configurations and implementation approaches in coordination with functional leadership. Support technical interfaces and data flows between MES and PLM, ERP, integration middleware, planning, reporting, and engineering systems. Coordinate deployment activities across development, test, staging, and production environments. Evaluate technical impacts and dependencies associated with proposed MES changes. Production Support & Problem Resolution Provide technical leadership for complex MES incidents, production issues, and user-impacting problems. Troubleshoot issues involving routings, work instructions, BOMs, production records, data collection, integrations, system performance, and material traceability. Perform root-cause analysis of recurring application, database, configuration, and integration issues and implement corrective or preventive solutions. Coordinate resolution activities across internal technology teams, business stakeholders, and software suppliers. Maintain technical documentation, configuration standards, operational procedures, and support knowledge. Technical Leadership & Continuous Improvement Recommend technical solutions, standards, and platform improvements that increase MES reliability, performance, scalability, and supportability. Provide technical guidance and mentoring to administrators and other technical staff supporting MES. Collaborate with enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, infrastructure, database, and integration teams to ensure MES aligns with enterprise standards. Identify opportunities to automate administrative, monitoring, deployment, and support activities. Basic Qualifications U.S. Citizenship is required. Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related discipline with 12–15 years of relevant experience; or Master's degree with 10–13 years of relevant experience. Additional relevant experience may be considered in lieu of a degree where permitted by the applicable job profile. Significant experience administering, configuring, supporting, or implementing complex enterprise applications. Experience troubleshooting complex application, database, performance, configuration, and integration issues. Experience supporting enterprise application upgrades, patches, deployments, testing, and production releases. Working knowledge of relational databases, SQL, application architecture, and enterprise system integrations. Experience performing root-cause analysis and developing solutions to complex technical problems. Demonstrated ability to coordinate technical activities across infrastructure, database, cybersecurity, application, supplier, and business teams. Ability to communicate complex technical issues, risks, and recommendations to technical and senior leadership audiences. Preferred Qualifications Significant administration, implementation, or technical support experience with Manufacturing Execution Systems, preferably iBase-t Solumina . Experience with PTC Windchill PLM, Deltek Costpoint ERP, eQube-MI, or eQube-BI . Experience supporting integrations and transactional data flows among MES, PLM, ERP, planning, and engineering systems. Experience with SQL Server, Oracle, SQL development/querying, database troubleshooting, and data analysis. Experience supporting highly available, business-critical manufacturing production environments. Knowledge of manufacturing processes including routings, work instructions, BOMs,