Principal Engineer – Electrical, Lightning Protection & Ice Mitigation

Job Description Summary

GE Vernova is seeking a Principal Engineer to provide technical leadership in Lightning Protection & Ice Mitigation for wind turbine blades—an area critical to safety, quality, and long‑term performance.

This Control Title Holder (CTH) role owns the technical underwriting of the lightning protection and ice mitigation systems design concepts, specifications, practices, issue resolution approaches, and defect acceptance criteria across the full product lifecycle.

Lightning protection and ice mitigation represent the primary protection for the wind turbine blade against environmental events.

This includes integrating the wind blade into the turbine grounding system along with other components within the wind turbine blade, such as the monitoring system and carbon components.

In this role, you will define and enforce the technical rigor required to ensure design decisions result in safe, high‑quality products and services that meet customer and regulatory expectations.

You will collaborate closely with blade design teams, cross‑functional partners, and designated technical experts across Design, Systems, Quality, Supply Chain, and Manufacturing—providing both technical oversight and hands‑on contribution as needed.

You will support the Blades Chief Engineer in setting and executing strategy related to design robustness, factory and field issue resolution, and technology development within the lightning and ice mitigation domain.

A key responsibility of this role is mentoring and developing engineering talent, building sustainable technical depth within blade structural components.

This is a senior technical leadership role requiring deep domain expertise, strong systems thinking, and disciplined problem‑solving, while actively advancing organizational capability and engineering excellence.

Technical Authority & Strategic

Roadmap:

Serve as the global Control Title Holder (CTH) for lightning protection and ice mitigation; own the technology roadmap, design specifications, and underwriting of all system concepts, defect acceptance criteria, and safety practices across the product lifecycle.

System-Level Engineering & EMI Control:
Define and oversee the holistic integration of lightning protection and grounding from blade tip to foundation; manage electro-physics modeling, high-voltage transient analysis, and EMI design to ensure system reliability and common‑mode current mitigation in bearings.

Performance Validation &

Risk Management:

Lead robust validation campaigns—including HALT and subscale testing—to verify performance under extreme environmental conditions; chair critical design reviews and drive FMEA-based risk mitigation to ensure design robustness.

Cross-Functional Execution & Quality Oversight:
Collaborate with Design, Manufacturing, Quality, and Supply Chain to provide hands‑on technical guidance on NPI, factory quality issues, field repairs, and the integration of advanced heating technologies for ice mitigation.

Technical Leadership & Capability Building:
Drive organizational excellence by mentoring engineering talent, setting technical rigor standards, and representing the company in international standards bodies (e.g., IEC, UL) to influence regulatory requirements and industry best practices.

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university or college in Electrical Engineering or a related discipline.
• 10+ years of professional experience in high voltage and high current electrical systems.

This role requires access to U.S. export-controlled information. If applicable, final offers will be contingent on ability to obtain authorization for access to U.S. export-controlled information from the U.S. Government.

• Master’s or PhD degree preferred.
• In‑depth knowledge of high voltage electro physics.
• In‑depth knowledge of IEC 61400-24 requirements and testing procedures and the building‑block approach to validation.
• Working knowledge of composite manufacturing processes.
• Prior experience in technical leadership roles guiding teams through structured design processes to…