Substation Automation Engineer - Grid Modernization

The Opportunity

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.

Candidates located near any Black & Veatch U.S. Regional Office may be considered, with preference for the following locations:
Kansas City (KS), Atlanta (GA), Raleigh (NC), Dallas (TX), Houston (TX), Orlando (FL), Portland (OR) or Phoenix (AZ).

• 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.
• 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 system‑level tuning techniques for time‑critical digital‑substation workloads.
• Develop PTP‑based time‑synchronization architectures including grand master, boundary, and transparent clock configurations and incorporate timing considerations into the system design.
• Integrate multi‑vendor IEDs with protection settings and logic, coordinating measurements, controls, alarms, and event data with SCADA and HMI systems.
• Apply IEC
  61850 data‑modeling concepts to confirm interoperability across mixed fleets of protection and control devices.
• Incorporate cybersecurity principles into system architecture, including authentication, role‑based access control, network segmentation, secure communications, and device hardening.
• Apply cyber‑informed engineering principles by identifying high‑consequence functions and integrating protective measures directly into system architecture, embedding security decisions from the earliest stages of engineering rather than treating them as add‑on controls.
• Develop and configure virtualized protection, HMI, gateway/RTU, and related substation applications on platforms including VMware ESXi with vCenter, vSAN, and NSX;
  Red Hat KVM or Open Shift Virtualization; and SEAPATH’s real‑time, high‑availability hypervisor platform designed to run virtualized protection, automation, and control workloads with deterministic performance and PTP‑synchronized operation on industrial servers meeting IEC
  61850‑3 and IEEE
  1613 criteria.
• Contribute to or develop toward contributing to IEEE and IEC standards and collaborative initiatives related to IEC
  61850, digital substations, time synchronization, and cybersecurity.
• Support participation in technical bodies and industry groups such as IEC, IEEE, CIGRE, ISA
  99, and vPAC Alliance work streams.
• Support the advancement and practical application of virtualized protection, automation, and control concepts in alignment with the architectural direction established by the vPAC Alliance.
• Produce engineering documentation including network specifications, SCL models, timing plans, interface definitions, and system diagrams used across design, laboratory validation, and field implementation.
• Collaborate with project managers, technical leads, clients, and vendors to align designs with project goals, operational requirements, and industry best practices.

• Familiarity with cybersecurity frameworks for operational technology environments,…