Innovation Specialist

About this position

The Innovation Specialist is instrumental in identifying, evaluating, developing, and implementing new technology solutions, processes, and products that align with the organization's strategic goals. This person enhances efficiency, improves quality, and drives competitive advantage in a manufacturing environment. The Innovation Specialist monitors emerging trends, supports pilot projects, and collaborates with cross-functional partners to drive digital transformation across the business. Successful candidates blend creativity with technical rigor and able to experiment rapidly while ensuring solutions can scale within enterprise IT standards.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities

• Research, evaluate and analyze emerging technology trends and manufacturing methods to identify opportunities for innovation in IT and across the organization that drives improved productivity, cost reduction and/or enhanced product quality.
• Evaluate the potential of new tools, methodologies, and practices to improve operational efficiency and business outcomes.
• Lead innovation projects from concept to implementation.
• Collaborate with engineering, production, quality and finance teams to identify process inefficiencies and develop innovative solutions.
• Support digital transformation initiatives such as automation, robotics, IoT integration, and data-driven manufacturing.
• Collaborate with cross-functional department to generate and manage pipeline of innovation ideas.
• Scout vendors and recommend buy-vs-build paths.
• Develop and maintain documentation for innovation projects, prototypes, and intellectual property considerations.
• Build and maintain an IT innovation roadmap
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders to understand business challenges and propose technology-driven solutions.
• Facilitate brainstorming sessions, workshops, and innovation labs to promote a culture of innovation.
• Collect and analyze data to measure the effectiveness of new technologies and solutions.
• Map current processes, baseline KPIs
• Support the planning, execution, and evaluation of pilot projects, proof-of-concepts, and innovation initiatives.
• Work closely with development, infrastructure, and security teams to ensure feasibility, compliance, and scalability of solutions.
• Prepare presentations, reports, and business cases to communicate findings and recommendations to leadership.
• Assist in change management and communication efforts to ensure adoption of new technologies.
• Maintain confidentiality and adhere to company compliance and IT security standards.
• Other duties as assigned.

Minimum Experience and Qualifications

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Business, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 3-5 years of experience in an innovation, IT transformation, or technology-focused role (internship or co-op experience acceptable).

Core Competencies

• Strong understanding of IT systems, digital tools, and project lifecycles.
• Exposure to data analysis, automation tools, or continuous improvement concepts is a plus.
• Familiarity with governance, privacy and security practices
• Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder engagement skills.
• Manufacturing exposure; understanding of shop-floor adjacent processes and integrations (ERP/MES).
• Ability to critically evaluate technical designs, vendor proposals, and solution architectures to identify risks, gaps, feasibility issues, and unrealistic assumptions.
• Ability to translate business needs into clear technical concepts, high-level requirements, or prototype workflows.
• Comfort digging into technical details, diagnosing issues across applications, integrations, data flows, and automation platforms, and proposing pragmatic solutions.
• Strong analytical thinking with the ability to evaluate ROI, scalability, long-term maintainability, and operational impact of new technologies.
• Ability to objectively assess third-party work for quality, completeness, and alignment with IT standards and best practices.

Preferred Technical Skills

• Exposure to modern programming/scripting such as Python, C#/.NET, SQL, or similar for automation and integrations.
• Experience with AI/ML platforms
• Experience with supporting or implementing Azure services and Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Dataverse).
• Familiarity with AI agent frameworks.
• Understanding of REST APIs, JSON structures
• Experience with OCR, Intelligent Document Processing, or AI-assisted workflow automation

Job Requirement

• Willingness to travel occasionally to manufacturing sites to provide on-site support. (10% - 20%)