Senior OT / SCADA & Industrial Controls Engineer Electric Utilities
Position Overview
We are seeking an experienced Senior OT / SCADA & Industrial Controls Engineer / SME with 10+ years of experience in industrial control systems, utility operational technology (OT), grid operations, or comparable mission-critical environments.
The ideal candidate will bring deep technical and operational expertise across electric utility Distribution and/or Generation environments, including SCADA, control-center platforms, industrial controls, historians, Distributed Energy Resources (DER), DER Management Systems (DERMS), DCS, PLCs, generation controls, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS).
The role requires a strong understanding of the integration between field devices, control systems, communications infrastructure, utility applications, and enterprise IT platforms, with an emphasis on reliability, resiliency, cybersecurity, and safe grid/plant operations.
Key Responsibilities Distribution / Grid Operations
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- Provide technical leadership and subject matter expertise for electric distribution SCADA and grid-control environments.
- Support the architecture, implementation, integration, modernization, and operation of SCADA, DMS/ADMS, DERMS, historian, and related utility OT platforms.
- Work with GE e-terra, GE PowerOn Reliance (POR) or comparable utility control-center technologies.
- Support integration of field assets including substations, feeders, breakers, reclosers, switches, RTUs, IEDs, sensors, and other distribution automation equipment.
- Provide expertise in distribution switching operations, including network reconfiguration, planned and emergency switching, fault isolation, and service restoration.
- Support the integration and management of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) including solar PV, battery storage, EV infrastructure, microgrids, and controllable loads.
- Support DERMS capabilities for monitoring, forecasting, coordination, dispatch, and optimization of distributed energy resources.
- Work with PI Historian or comparable time-series historian platforms for collection, storage, visualization, analysis, and integration of operational data.
- Support integration between SCADA/ADMS/DERMS and related platforms such as GIS, OMS, EMS, asset-management, analytics, and enterprise applications.
- Participate in control-center and grid-modernization initiatives focused on improved reliability, resiliency, automation, and situational awareness.
Generation / Plant Controls
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- Provide engineering and technical expertise for power-generation control and automation systems.
- Support SCADA, Distributed Control Systems (DCS), Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), generation controls, and plant automation systems.
- Support integration and control of generation equipment including turbines, generators, auxiliary systems, balance-of-plant equipment, and associated instrumentation.
- Understand control strategies including sequencing, interlocks, alarms, equipment protection, synchronization, load control, and automated plant operations.
- Support Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) and associated battery-management, inverter/power-conversion, plant-controller, and energy-management systems.
- Support integration between plant-control environments, historians, monitoring platforms, and enterprise systems.
- Participate in commissioning, testing, troubleshooting, upgrades, migrations, and modernization of generation and industrial-control platforms.
OT Architecture & Integration Responsibilities
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- Understand end-to-end OT architectures spanning:
Field Devices / IEDs / Sensors RTU / PLC SCADA / DCS Historian ADMS / DERMS / EMS Enterprise IT & Analytics
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- Design and support interfaces between OT platforms and upstream/downstream systems.
- Work with industrial and utility communication technologies and protocols such as DNP3, Modbus, OPC/OPC-UA, IEC 61850, ICCP/TASE.2, or comparable protocols.
- Support highly available and redundant architectures appropriate for 24x7 mission-critical utility operations.
- Participate in system integration testing, factory acceptance testing (FAT), site acceptance testing (SAT), commissioning, cutover, and production stabilization.
- Assist with root-cause analysis and resolution of complex control-system and integration issues.
- Develop architecture diagrams, technical specifications, interface definitions, operating procedures, and engineering documentation.
OT Cybersecurity & Reliability
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- Apply OT cybersecurity principles to SCADA, DCS, PLC, DERMS, historian, and industrial-control environments.
- Understand segmentation between enterprise IT and operational technology networks, including firewalls, DMZs, secure remote access, identity/access controls, logging, and monitoring.
- Work collaboratively with cybersecurity teams to support applicable utility and industrial cybersecurity requirements.
- Familiarity with NERC CIP, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, IEC 62443, or similar OT cybersecurity frameworks is preferred.
- Design solutions with appropriate consideration for availability, redundancy, disaster recovery, failover, resiliency, and operational safety.
Required Qualifications
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- 10+ years of experience in industrial controls, operational technology, electric utilities, power generation, grid operations, or comparable industrial environments.
- Demonstrated experience with SCADA systems in utility or industrial environments.
- Strong knowledge of at least one of the following domains:
- Electric Distribution / Grid Operations
- Power Generation / Plant Controls
- Battery Energy Storage / DER
- Hands-on or architecture-level experience with several of the following:
- SCADA
- GE e-terra
- GE PowerOn Reliance (POR) or comparable DMS/ADMS
- PI Historian or comparable historian
- DERMS / DER
- Distribution switching
- DCS
- PLC
- Generation control systems
- Battery/BESS control systems
- Strong understanding of industrial-control architecture and integration.
- Experience working with mission-critical, high-availability production environments.
- Ability to troubleshoot complex issues spanning field equipment, communications, control systems, applications, and networks.
- Strong technical documentation, communication, and stakeholder-management skills.
Preferred Qualifications
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- Experience working directly with electric utilities, independent power producers, generation companies, or renewable-energy operators.
- Experience with grid-modernization, ADMS, DERMS, renewable integration, or BESS programs.
- Experience with major industrial-control platforms from vendors such as GE Vernova, Siemens, Schneider Electric, ABB/Hitachi Energy, Emerson, Honeywell, Rockwell Automation, or comparable providers.
- Knowledge of utility systems including EMS, OMS, GIS, ADMS/DMS and asset-management platforms.
- Understanding of utility control-center and power-plant operating procedures.
- Experience supporting large-scale OT modernization or IT/OT convergence initiatives.
- Knowledge of cloud, data, analytics, or AI integration with OT environments is advantageous.
Candidate Profile
The successful candidate will be a senior OT/industrial-controls professional capable of operating at the intersection of engineering, operations, and technology.
The candidate should be comfortable engaging with control-room operators, generation engineers, grid operators, OT engineers, field personnel, cybersecurity teams, IT architects, technology vendors, and utility leadership.
While experience across both Distribution and Generation is desirable, candidates with deep expertise in either domain combined with strong foundational SCADA/industrial-controls experience should also be considered.
For recruiting purposes, I would title this "Senior OT / SCADA & Industrial Controls SME Electric Utilities" rather than simply "SCADA Engineer." It better captures the seniority and the breadth across Distribution, Generation, DER/BESS, and IT/OT integration.
Manager's comments like what type of people he is looking to work in his team - Strong tech with good com skill
Other skills Management skills, leadership skills, communication and presentation skills, architectural skills or only development skills, etc.
PALNAR, the trade name of Palayekar Companies Inc. founded in 1997, delivers global software and technology services. Headquartered in Cranbury, New Jersey - United States, with operations in India (Noida and Goa), PALNAR provides software consulting, development, IT Support service and ongoing technology support worldwide.
