Lead Control Hardware Design Engineer

Become part of a winning team and help to deliver the Green Energy transition. You will be responsible for leading the overall design, maintenance, and implementation of the standard HVDC Control and Protection System Cabinets. This includes creating the control cabinet design documentation, interconnection diagrams, design guides and overseeing the system roll out processes. As the Lead Engineer, you will continue to develop your team by assisting with recruitment, the provision of technical guidance and mentoring. This team will drive consistent design practices and common global processes for efficient project implementation. You will work across various engineering disciplines within the HVDC business.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Maintain and manage the evolution of standard cabinet designs and their associated datapacks.
• Publish and deliver a regular release plan for each product and its supporting standard documentation and tools, ensuring the cabinet datapacks and “How to” Design Guides are in a constantly project-ready form.
• The Datapack documentation includes the circuit diagrams, wire/cable lists, assembly drawings, BoMs, test spec and configuration specs.
• Prioritise and agree with the solution owners which clarifications and updates should be adopted for the next periodic standard datapack update.
• Continually look for execution efficiencies that can be gained from standardisation of the tasks required to support the product delivery from manufacture through to the site installation.
• Work with our type test specialists within the Product Care team to keep our type test certification and reports up to date and available in a form acceptable to our clients.
• Assist in the design and standardisation of LANs/Communication Architectures and the configuration of industrial ethernet switches/routers and satellite clocks.
• Manage, update and ensure compliance with departmental standard design practices, guidelines and processes across all projects.
• Maintain an awareness of the relevant IEC standards.
• Assist with the expansion of our second sources and to seamlessly manage changes forced by obsolescence of any components within the core product (e.g. power supplies, ethernet switches, cabinet metal work, etc.).
• Continuously improve the product in terms of delivery speed, stability and reliability by increasing the percentage of standard documentation used by every project.
• Work with other HVDC teams and the control room layout teams in particular, to extend the scope of the standard design to cover more of the substation control room.
• Oversee the evolution and maintenance of the standard control system cabinet designs.
• Project control system configuration and hand over support.
• The lead engineer should oversee the roll out and configuration of the standard control system solution to all projects.
• Work closely with project engineers, to help them ascertain a project’s control system requirements and produce detailed design documentation for the control system which comply with the standard design.
• Attend project EDRs to provide guidance in reviewing project signal lists and ensure they comply with the standard configurable design and engineering policies and procedures.
• Attend Project MDRs (Manufacturing Datapack Reviews) to ensure the standard designs have been used as expected.
• Analyse project requirements, with the aim of improving the future standard solution.
• Provide rapid second line product support to assist with client queries that cannot be answered by the responsible project engineer.
• Assist site activities relevant to the installation and commissioning of the control system.
• Work with site engineers to create the most efficient standard control room layouts which suit the requirements of the projects and provide guidance with the intended cable and fibre routing.
• Occasionally assist with cabinet production tests as a “reality check.”
• Provide cabinet manufacturing support and support the project engineers with the testing and FAT witnessing of the Control System cabinets.
• Prepare and present technical information for the HVDC Control Systems to internal and external customers current and future with the tendering team.
• Review and approve project design documents, ensuring they maintain the highest quality, are on time and within the targeted cost.
• Regularly review the Technical Queries (TQs) from our approved manufacturers, queries received from clients that relate to the product and/or their associated standardised documentation, and feedback from the Project Engineers.

Required Skills

• Degree in Electronics/Electrical engineering or related field.
• Fluent and efficient user of Ebase, Creo Parametric, the IM2 document management system and other design tools.
• Strong understanding of the modularity and configurability of the cabinet hardware design.
• Experienced in developing electrical designs for industrial control systems.
• Demonstrated track record of designing quality systems/components that exceed design requirements, beat cost targets, and exceed reliability targets.
• Understanding of EMC and how to maintain designs which minimise related issues.
• Electrical fault-finding skills, with adherence to highest safety procedures.
• Working knowledge of industrial and utility electrical control and protection systems and Digital Control Systems, Substation Automation.
• Knowledge of industrial communication networks such as IEC61850 and Ethernet based protocols.
• Knowledge of Networking & Cybersecurity systems.

Desired Characteristics

• Proven technical leadership in a complex system engineering development environment.
• Established team management and leadership skills.
• Effective delegation of tasks amongst a team.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills with the confidence to mentor and develop the skills of team members.
• Demonstrated ability to analyse and resolve problems.
• Proactively serves on cross-functional leadership teams; makes decisions independently; pulls in experts when needed.