Protection and Commissioning Engineer - SPN

80507
- Protection and Commissioning Engineer

This Protection and Commissioning Engineer will report to the Lead Protection and Commissioning Engineer and will work within the Capital Programme based in several locations in our SPN licence area in either Kent, Surrey or Sussex. You will be a permanent employee.

You will attract a salary of £80,557 plus car and a bonus of 3%.

If you are successful, you will need to undertake a medical and DBS reference check.

Should you not have the full range of essential skills, qualifications and competencies listed below, there may be an opportunity for further training to equip you. If you do not have all relevant competencies for the core grade, it will be appropriate to appoint at a lower grade until you have developed the required competencies.

Close Date: .05 / 01 / 2026

• 23 Days Annual Leave plus bank holidays.
• Reservist Leave - Additional 18 days full pay and 22 unpaid
• Personal Pension Plan - Personal contribution rates of 4% or 5% (UK Power Networks will make a corresponding contribution of 8% or 10%)
• Tenancy Loan Deposit Scheme, Season Ticket Loan
• Tax efficient benefits :
  Cycle to Work, Home & Tech, and Green Car Leasing Schemes
• Occupational Health support
• Switched On - scheme providing discount on hundreds of retailers' products
• Discounted gym membership
• Employee Assistance Programme

• Plan and perform commissioning testing of all types of substation equipment at all voltage levels following current procedures.
• Provide Design / Standards support.
• Perform witnessing of manufacturers commissioning tests to ensure quality assurance and compliance.

Knowledge and Experience Required

You will hold either a relevant engineering degree or Higher National HNC / HND qualification. It is desirable that you have network operational experience as an Authorised Person (AP) of which, a period of time would be as a commissioning engineer.

This is a complex field requiring high technical understanding and proficiency and will include the ability to apply practical engineering sense from first principles using a logical disciplined approach to problem solving.

Additional IT skills will allow interaction from laptop to complex modern relay schemes to programme, test, extract fault records and interpret results with a right first-time approach.

• Ensure safety management prevail throughout all areas and that safety performance is maintained within parameters defined by the Executive. Promote the zero harm philosophy.
• Plan and manage the programme of commissioning work testing and plant acceptance testing leading to safe energisation and successful project completion for both internal and external customers.
• Develop and agree commissioning plans and programmes for projects applying sound engineering knowledge to set standards and ensure thorough and complete testing of new schemes.
• At design reviews working with in‑house, contractor and supplier experts, evaluate designs which deliver optimisation and leads to scheme design understanding, reduced risk and complete testing methodology.
• Check and apply software programmable logic and settings to protection schemes checking operational and making adjustments to the scheme logic.
• During commissioning testing, diagnose problems and propose modifications to scheme design to provide desired operability.
• As a recognised expert, investigate, advise, diagnose and correct mal operations that occur during the life of the equipment. Drawing on the skills of senior commissioning engineers, collaboration with technical experts in other organisations propose the root cause and to develop permanent solutions to the issues. Often this is required to tight timescales when network equipment has failed in service.
• Work with Network Control, planning and authorising safe energisation of plant onto the network.
• To ensure that Customer Minutes Lost (CML) and Customer Interruptions (CI) are minimised as a result of the activities of commissioning new plant and that schemes will deliver lower numbers over the life of the project.
• To witness contractors testing and to coordinate the use of…