Senior Substation Automation Engineer Grid Modernization (IEC 61850)

Job Summary

Black & Veatch is seeking a senior substation automation engineer to lead IEC 61850 grid modernization initiatives, including the transition of digital and virtual substations from pilot programs into production environments. The role provides technical leadership across architecture, engineering, integration, and industry collaboration.

Project Details

The Power SCADA team is developing secure, vendor-agnostic digital substation and virtual protection, automation, and control solutions. Work includes IEC 61850-based station and process buses, multi-vendor protection and control systems, and virtualized substation applications.

Responsibilities

• Create and validate IEC 61850 SCL models, including ICD, CID, and SCD files, logical node mappings, datasets, control blocks, and GOOSE configurations.
• Configure MMS, GOOSE, and sampled-value communications for protection, automation, monitoring, and SCADA systems.
• Design station-bus, process-bus, network segmentation, PRP/HSR, VLAN, QoS, multicast, and PTP time-synchronization architectures.
• Integrate multi-vendor IEDs with protection settings, controls, alarms, event data, SCADA, and HMI platforms.
• Apply cybersecurity and system-hardening practices to substation architectures and develop virtualized protection, HMI, gateway, and RTU applications.
• Prepare network specifications, timing plans, interface definitions, SCL models, and system diagrams for design, testing, and field deployment.
• Coordinate with clients, project managers, technical leaders, vendors, utilities, and industry organizations.

Required Experience

• Bachelor's degree in engineering or equivalent engineering experience.
• At least 11 years of related work experience.
• Active engineering registration or licensure supporting engineer-of-record requirements.
• Experience or familiarity with IEC 61850, digital substations, substation networking, PTP timing, operational technology cybersecurity, and multi-vendor IED integration.
• Preferred experience includes VMware ESXi, vCenter, vSAN, NSX, Red Hat KVM, OpenShift Virtualization, SEAPATH, and virtualized protection and automation workloads.
• Knowledge of IEC, IEEE, CIGRE, ISA99, or vPAC Alliance initiatives is preferred.

Compensation and Benefits

The California annual compensation range is $163,404-$308,464, with final pay based on qualifications, experience, location, and other applicable factors. The employee-owned company offers comprehensive health coverage, retirement matching, paid time off, tuition and adoption reimbursement, wellness programs, and potential performance-based bonus eligibility. Relocation assistance may be available, and hybrid or flexible work may be offered after the first 90 days at management discretion.

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