Substation Automation Engineer - Grid Modernization

About the role

The Opportunity: In this role, you may have the opportunity to:

• Lead the transition of IEC 61850-based digital and virtual substations from pilot to production, shaping real-world grid modernization outcomes.
• Design and standardize secure, vendor-agnostic substation automation architectures that improve resilience, flexibility, and scalability.
• Serve as a technical leader and subject-matter expert, influencing system architecture, best practices, and emerging standards.
• Collaborate with utilities, technology partners, and industry groups (including vPAC Alliance) to help define the future of protection, automation, and control.

Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:

• IEC 61850 Engineering & Modeling
• Develop SCL engineering artifacts including ICD, CID, and SCD files, datasets, logical node mappings, reporting and control blocks, and GOOSE publications and subscriptions.
• Configure and validate MMS, GOOSE, and SV messaging for protection, automation, monitoring, and SCADA applications.
• Substation Networking & Time Synchronization
• Design and document station-bus and process-bus network architectures using PRP/HSR, VLANs, QoS, multicast management, and traffic segmentation practices.
• Design deterministic real-time networking paths for time-sensitive protection and automation applications, incorporating latency budgeting, PTP timing performance, and behaviors defined for substation-class devices meeting IEC 61850-3 and IEEE 1613 environmental and EMC requirements.
• Diagnose and optimize real-time network behavior through traffic-capture analysis, timing-accuracy evaluation, and system-level tuning techniques for time-critical digital-substation workloads.
• Develop PTP-based time-synchronization architectures including grandmaster, boundary, and transparent clock configurations and incorporate timing considerations into the system design.
• Protection, Automation & SCADA Integration
• Integrate multi-vendor IEDs with protection settings and logic, coordinating measurements, controls, alarms, and event data with SCADA and HMI systems.
• Apply IEC 61850 data-modeling concepts to confirm interoperability across mixed fleets of protection and control devices.
• Cybersecurity & System Hardening
• Incorporate cybersecurity principles into system architecture, including authentication, role-based access control, network segmentation, secure communications, and device hardening.
• Apply cyber-informed engineering principles by identifying high-consequence functions and integrating protective measures directly into system architecture, embedding security decisions from the earliest stages of engineering rather than treating them as add-on controls.
• Virtualization of Substation Functions
• Develop and configure virtualized protection, HMI, gateway/RTU, and related substation applications on platforms including VMware ESXi with vCenter, vSAN, and NSX; Red Hat KVM or OpenShift Virtualization; and SEAPATH’s real-time, high-availability hypervisor platform designed to run virtualized protection, automation, and control workloads with deterministic performance and PTP-synchronized operation on industrial servers meeting IEC 61850-3 and IEEE 1613 criteria.
• Industry Engagement & Technical Leadership
• Contribute to, or develop toward contributing to, IEEE and IEC standards and collaborative initiatives related to IEC 61850, digital substations, time synchronization, and cybersecurity.
• Support participation in technical bodies and industry groups such as IEC, IEEE, CIGRE, ISA99, and vPAC Alliance workstreams.
• Support the advancement and practical application of virtualized protection, automation, and control concepts in alignment with the architectural direction established by the vPAC Alliance.

Qualifications

• Preferred Qualifications:
• Familiarity with cybersecurity frameworks for operational technology environments, including secure communications and system-hardening practices.
• Interest or participation in IEEE and IEC standards development related to IEC 61850, time synchronization, digital substations, and cybersecurity.
• Experience deploying or supporting virtualized protection, automation, and control applications on VMware ESXi/vCenter/vSAN/NSX, Red Hat KVM or OpenShift Virtualization, and SEAPATH’s real-time, high-availability hypervisor platform for vPAC workloads.
• Experience deploying virtualized substation workloads on industrial servers certified to IEC 618503 and IEEE 1613 environmental and EMC requirements.
• Familiarity with vPAC architectural principles and emerging practices for hosting protection, automation, and control systems on virtualized platforms.
• Interest in or experience with virtualized protection, automation, and control concepts.
• Professional Engineer (PE) License.
• Minimum Qualifications:
• Bachelor's Degree in Engineering from either a recognized accredited program in their home country or the country in which the professional is practicing.
• Minimum of 5 years related work experience.