Senior Substation Automation Engineer - Grid Modernization; IEC

Senior Substation Automation Engineer - Grid Modernization (IEC 61850)

Together, we own our company, our future, and our shared success. As an employee-owned company, our people are Black & Veatch. We put them at the center of everything we do and empower them to grow, explore new possibilities and use their diverse talents and perspectives to solve humanity's biggest challenges in an ever-evolving world. With over 100 years of innovation in sustainable infrastructure and our expertise in engineering, procurement, consulting and construction, together we are building a world of difference.

Company:
Black & Veatch Corporation Opportunity Type:
Staff Relocation eligible:
Yes Full time/Part time:
Full-Time Project Only Hire:
No Visa Sponsorship Available:
No

Why Black & Veatch? At Black & Veatch, you'll be part of work that matters—designing, creating, and building the infrastructure communities rely on every day, from concept through execution. We care about how the work gets done as much as what we build. Safety is built into every decision, and people look out for each other—speaking up, collaborating, and doing the right thing because it affects real lives.

You'll work alongside teams solving complex challenges and turning ideas into solutions that perform in the real world—gaining hands-on experience across projects, technologies, and disciplines. Ownership shows up in how we work. We take responsibility for outcomes, follow through on commitments, and take pride in what we deliver. As a 100% employee-owned company, employees share in the long-term success we build together.

With flexible ways of working and meaningful development opportunities, you'll build a career you can be proud to stand behind.

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.

Black & Veatch is expanding its Power SCADA team to support a strategic grid modernization initiative focused on IEC 61850-based substation automation and virtual substation technologies. As a founding member of the Virtual Protection, Automation, and Control (vPAC) Alliance, Black & Veatch is collaborating with industry leaders to advance open, secure, and vendor-agnostic digital substation solutions that replace traditional, hardware-intensive architectures with virtualized, software-defined platforms.

Following successful pilot efforts, BV is now transitioning virtual substations into production environments. This role is being created to bring in experienced SCADA professionals who can help design, implement, standardize, and support production-ready Power SCADA solutions that enable resilient, flexible, and future-ready grid infrastructure.

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…