Senior Electrical Engineer - Power Systems

Key Responsibilities

Distribution Protection Engineering

Perform protection analysis and coordination reviews for utility distribution and substation systems.

• Review relay settings, fault-current impacts, and protection changes associated with breakers, relays, reclosers, fuses, and related equipment.

• Evaluate protective-device coordination, feeder and transformer protection, and the field application of protection schemes.

• Develop or review protection philosophies, application practices, calculations, and settings documentation.

• Support commissioning, field testing, and validation of protection systems.

Substation Protection & Control

• Develop protection schemes for utility distribution and substation applications.

• Apply transformer differential, feeder, bus, breaker failure, and related protection functions as project needs require.

• Support relay logic, control narratives, sequence-of-operations documentation, and related design packages where needed.

• Support protection system replacement, upgrade, and modernization programs.

Grid Reliability & Trip Investigation

• Investigate unexpected trips to determine why a relay or breaker operated and recommend practical corrective actions.

• Perform root-cause investigations of trips, outages, and suspected protection misoperations.

• Develop clear technical findings and corrective-action recommendations.

• Communicate results through concise reports and customer presentations.

Protection System Modernization

• Support relay and breaker replacement projects, from individual device replacements to broader protection system modernization efforts.

• Develop technical specifications, design criteria, engineering packages, and specification reviews.

• Coordinate protection requirements with utility engineering, operations, testing, and project teams.

Technical Leadership & Client Support

• Lead assigned engineering work with minimal oversight and maintain quality, schedule, and budget awareness.

• Perform technical reviews and mentor less-experienced engineers.

• Participate in customer meetings, design reviews, and technical discussions.

• Provide surge capacity and specialized expertise for critical utility programs and workforce gaps.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related discipline.
• Approximately 10 or more years of directly relevant utility protection and control experience, or an equivalent combination of experience and demonstrated capability.
• Demonstrated experience developing protective relay settings and performing protection coordination and fault analysis.
• Strong working knowledge of utility distribution substations and feeders, protective-device coordination, relay settings, feeder and transformer protection, relay logic, and protection application principles.
• Experience investigating relay events, trips, outages, or misoperations and translating findings into practical recommendations.
• Ability to independently prepare calculations, settings files, technical reports, specifications, and design documentation.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to work directly with utility engineering and operations personnel.

Preferred Qualifications

• Professional Engineer (PE) license or the ability to obtain one.
• Experience supporting investor-owned, municipal, or cooperative electric utilities.
• Experience with SEL relays and related tools, especially SEL-351/351S, SEL-421, SEL-451, SEL-487B/487E, SEL-501, SEL-587, SEL-651R2, and SEL-751.
• Experience with recognized power-system analysis or protection-coordination software.
• Familiarity with SCADA, RTUs, distribution automation, communications, and substation modernization projects.
• Working knowledge of applicable IEEE, NERC, and utility-specific protection standards and practices.
• Experience providing technical leadership, quality reviews, or mentorship.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a seasoned protection engineer with practical utility experience. They can move confidently from system studies and relay settings to event investigation, design review, and customer discussion. They are accountable, detail-oriented, comfortable working independently, and able to explain complex protection issues clearly.

Core Areas of Expertise