Manufacturing IT Staffing for MES, ERP, and Industrial IoT Teams
From shop-floor PLC work to enterprise ERP migrations, KORE1 places engineers who ship on plant time, not calendar quarters. Contract, direct hire, and project, across 30+ U.S. metros.
KORE1 places MES, ERP, industrial IoT, SCADA, and PLC talent into U.S. manufacturers as contract, direct hire, or project hires, with an average 17-day IT fill, 92% 12-month retention, and placements since 2005.
Manufacturing IT is a different hiring problem. The people who keep a plant running have to read a one-line panel code at 3 a.m., speak fluent IT with the shop, and pass a safety orientation before they ever touch a keyboard. The bench is shrinking. Fast.
We built our manufacturing IT practice around that reality. Three verticals drive most of our current work: shop-floor systems (MES, historians, HMI), ERP migrations on SAP and Oracle, and the OT/IT convergence layer where controls engineers meet cloud data teams. Our recruiters carry an average 15+ years in the seat, so a “PLC-literate controls engineer, Allen-Bradley preferred, onsite within 25 miles” is a brief, not a translation exercise.
One recent case. A fusion-energy manufacturer needed electromechanical engineers fluent in Allen-Bradley and Siemens PLC, onsite within a 25 to 30 mile radius of a West Coast facility. Two hires closed. Neither candidate had a LinkedIn profile that would have matched a boolean search. That part matters.
MES, historians, HMI, and the people who actually touch the line
Shop-floor hiring breaks when the job post reads like a corporate IT req. “Senior software engineer” is not the right framing for someone who will spend Tuesday morning tracing a Rockwell FactoryTalk alarm back to a bad tag on a historian. Wrong bench.
We source for the specifics. GE Proficy, Wonderware / AVEVA, Rockwell FactoryTalk, Ignition SCADA by Inductive Automation, OSIsoft PI historians. Candidates who have stood in front of a panel and can explain what they changed, not just what they shipped.
Most of these roles are onsite, and we respect that in the search. A hybrid posting on a plant-floor role costs you a week of bad matches. So the kickoff call includes a blunt question about where the work actually happens.
SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, IFS, Epicor, staffed end to end
ERP work at a manufacturer is half configuration, half change management. A functional consultant who understands MRP and can sit in a shop-floor kaizen is worth four who can only configure. Not close.
Our ERP consultant bench covers S/4HANA migrations, Oracle Cloud ERP, NetSuite for mid-market manufacturers, IFS for asset-heavy operations, and Epicor Kinetic for discrete manufacturing. We also staff the integration layer, Boomi and MuleSoft, because ERP modernization is never a single platform. It never is.
Sibling coverage: see ERP Consultant Staffing for the full engagement model. Manufacturing-specific ERP roles usually need an additional controls or MES bridge, and we staff that bridge too.
PLC, SCADA, and the OT/IT convergence seat
The PLC-literate bench is shrinking. We hear this from plant directors every week, and the trade data backs it up. BLS Occupational Outlook still projects the overall engineering population growing slowly, but the controls subset is aging out faster than it’s backfilling.
We source across the stack.
- Allen-Bradley (Rockwell) and Siemens PLC programmers, ladder logic and structured text
- SCADA engineers on Ignition, iFIX, Wonderware, and FactoryTalk View
- Industrial IoT architects bridging OPC UA, MQTT, and AWS IoT SiteWise or Azure IoT Hub
- OT cybersecurity, Claroty / Nozomi / Dragos. See also Cybersecurity Staffing
- Data engineers pulling historian data into Snowflake or Databricks for plant analytics, covered under Data Analytics Staffing
One recruiter note. If the role truly requires Allen-Bradley hands-on experience, say so in the req. We can still source it. A generic “PLC experience” post pulls the wrong half of the candidate pool. Every time.
Why manufacturers stay with KORE1
How to hire us
Contract
Plant-floor projects, ramp periods, and covering a PLC gap while you search. Weekly timesheet. We carry the W-2.
Direct hire
Permanent seat. Controls lead, MES architect, ERP functional. We guarantee the first 90 days.
Project / SOW
ERP migrations, MES stand-ups, plant digital transformations. Fixed-scope teams with a named lead.
Common Questions
What does KORE1 actually mean by “manufacturing IT staffing”?
Manufacturing IT staffing covers the engineers and consultants who run plant-floor and enterprise systems at a manufacturer. Think MES, ERP, SCADA, PLC/controls, historians, industrial IoT, and OT cybersecurity. We place all of it. It isn’t one job family.
How fast can you fill a controls or PLC engineer role?
17 days is our IT-wide average. Controls roles that require specific Allen-Bradley or Siemens hands-on experience and onsite work within a tight radius tend to run 3 to 5 weeks, because the bench is smaller and you’re waiting on real people, not keyword matches. We’ll tell you in the kickoff if we think the timeline is soft.
Do you place onsite-only plant-floor engineers, or only hybrid?
Onsite, hybrid, and remote where the role actually allows it. The honest answer: most shop-floor and controls work is onsite, and we respect that in the search. A remote posting on a panel-wiring role will cost you a week of wrong matches. Corporate ERP and data analytics seats are more flexible.
Can you staff a full ERP migration, not just individual consultants?
Yes. We’ve stood up S/4HANA, Oracle Cloud ERP, NetSuite, IFS, and Epicor teams with functional leads, technical consultants, integration engineers, and change management. Project model with a named lead, fixed scope, weekly status. See project staffing for the engagement frame.
Who handles OT cybersecurity hires, you or a separate cyber firm?
We do. OT cyber is a specialization inside our cybersecurity practice, covering Claroty, Nozomi, Dragos, asset inventory, and IEC 62443 alignment. The people who get this work are rare. We source for them directly. Pairs well with controls hires because they work side by side.
What manufacturing verticals have you actually placed in?
Discrete and process both. Recent work spans automotive suppliers, aerospace and defense, medical device, food and beverage, consumer packaged goods, oil and gas midstream, a fusion-energy manufacturer on the electromechanical side, and a handful of contract manufacturing operations that span multiple verticals at once. We won’t pretend to know a vertical we haven’t placed in. Ask on the intake call.
How do fees work for manufacturing IT?
Contract is a standard bill/pay spread with the W-2 carried by KORE1. Direct hire is a contingency fee, typically a percentage of first-year base, with a 90-day guarantee. Project and SOW are custom-scoped. No retainer for standard contingency work.
Staffing a plant-floor build, an ERP migration, or a controls backfill?
Tell us the role, the site, and the timeline. You’ll get a recruiter on the phone, not a form response.
Start a manufacturing IT search
Related: IT Staffing Services · ERP Consultant Staffing · Cybersecurity Staffing · Data Analytics Staffing · Light Industrial & Warehouse Staffing