Program Manager, Energy & Infrastructure

Overview

Location: Washington, DC / Auburn, Alabama / Hybrid

The Charles

D. McCrary Institute is accepting applications for a Program Manager, Energy & Infrastructure. This position serves as McCrary’s external-facing program lead for the DOE-funded Southeast Region Cybersecurity Collaboration Center (SERC3) — one of the nation’s premier applied research and testbed environments for operational technology (OT), industrial control systems (ICS), and critical infrastructure cybersecurity.

The Program Manager is the primary face of McCrary to SERC3’s key stakeholders, including DOE CESER, national laboratories, the national industry advisory board, utility operators, and technology partners. The role is accountable for ensuring McCrary delivers valuable, mission-focused products and services on time and within budget, supporting existing sponsored research programs and developing new capabilities for current and future energy and infrastructure customers.

This is a program leadership and external engagement role, not a technical operations role. The Program Manager drives strategy, partnership development, funding capture, program execution, and transition outcomes. The Program Manager, Energy & Infrastructure works alongside two peer Program Managers — for Defense & National Security and State & Local Government, respectively — in a matrixed organizational structure in which all technical staff report to the Deputy Director for Applied Research & Services/Edge Lab Director and are matrixed to each Program Manager for contract deliverables and execution within their respective portfolios.

Technical direction, laboratory operations, technical vendor relationships, and execution of McCrary’s Edge Lab demonstrations and cyber-physical test environments remain the responsibility of the Deputy Director for Applied Research & Services/Edge Lab Director and technical teams.

For McCrary’s current sponsored research in support of DOE CESER, the role will advance three high-level priorities: faster, better AI-assisted and threat-informed OT incident response; hardening distributed energy resources and other high-consequence critical infrastructure assets; and safer evaluation and adoption of emerging OT cybersecurity technologies through tested evidence in utility-like environments.

SERC3 is a formal partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), operating in close collaboration with EPRI and other national laboratories to deliver joint applied research, testbed activities, and operationally useful cybersecurity outcomes for America’s critical infrastructure operators.

SERC3’s national industry advisory board draws cybersecurity leaders from Southern Company, Next Era Energy, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, TVA, Power South, Energy Southeast, EPB Chattanooga, Commonwealth LNG, and other major utilities and critical infrastructure organizations.

An emerging strategic priority for SERC3 is the development of an independent technology validation and verification (TV&V) capability — bringing together McCrary’s testbed infrastructure, ORNL partnership, and trusted operator network to produce vendor‑independent, hardware‑in‑the‑loop evaluation reports that utility operators can rely on for procurement decisions. No comparable capability exists for the OT/ICS cybersecurity sector today. The Program Manager will help define, develop, and commercialize this capability as a new revenue stream, in partnership with utility operators, cybersecurity technology companies, and energy and national‑security investment partners.

• Serve as McCrary’s primary external representative for SERC3, accountable for the quality, timeliness, and mission relevance of products and services delivered to existing and future energy and infrastructure customers.
• Build and maintain relationships with DOE CESER, national laboratories, EPRI, utility operators, cybersecurity technology companies, industry advisory board members, and selected energy and national‑security investment partners.
• Engage senior cybersecurity leaders from utilities and critical infrastructure operators to identify…