Consulting Engineer – HVDC Control & Protection Platform in Stafford

The energy transition drives an unprecedented growth in demand for and generation of electricity. To accommodate this growth, the capacity of the transmission system is projected to grow three‑fold. High voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems will play a key role in connecting remote and offshore renewables, interconnecting energy markets and reinforcing AC grids. Converter stations are required to convert AC to DC and vice versa. The brain of such converter stations are the control and protection systems, which ensure efficient, safe, and reliable operation of the power electronic valves and peripheral equipment.

GE Vernova’s Grid Systems Integration business line offers control and protection solutions for both voltage‑sourced converter (VSC) as well as line‑commutated converter (LCC) HVDC valve technologies to meet the transmission planning needs of utilities, system operators, developers and industrial clients worldwide. The control & protection algorithms are required on dedicated state‑of‑the‑art digital hardware platforms which ensure signal processing capability, connectivity and cyber security.

GE Vernova’s CTO office is tasked with developing the R&D roadmap for HVDC control & protection platforms, managing competencies within the company, and supporting projects with specialised technical support. Consulting Engineers, who sit in the CTO team, are the highest technical authority within GE Vernova's Grid Systems Integration and Cross Electrification business. They act as executive technical consultants, ensuring customer confidence, reviewing and enhancing design practices, acting as gate‑keepers for technical reviews, applying lessons learned, leading complex technology improvements, engaging with quality reviews and cost optimisation exercises.

Consulting Engineers are highly sought after within the GE Vernova business to provide expertise on challenging problems and to facilitate interfaces with adjacent technical domains. They are likely to have a number of publications, including conference papers, and patents. These professionals lead major technical initiatives, advocate for technological advancement, chair design reviews, mentor Principal Engineers and senior engineers, and benchmark their technology domain. They define the need for new design practices, author and review design standards, ensure lessons learned are documented and disseminated, and deliver effective technical presentations to upper management and external parties.

Consulting Engineers lead R&D and product enhancement projects with broad scope and significant impact on the business, acting as recognised experts in specific fields. They are tasked with major and complex assignments that bear long‑term business implications, contributing to overall strategy and navigating complex issues within their area of expertise.

• Serve as a recognized technical authority in HVDC control & protection platform solutions both internally and externally, and act as technical advisor to senior leadership levels.
• Actively contribute to and drive both internal and external standardisation, coordinate working group activities and proactively represent GE Vernova in IEC/CIGRE and similar professional bodies, task forces and industry committees.
• Stay abreast of, collect and internally communicate state‑of‑the‑art technology developments in HVDC control & protection platform technologies and applications.
• Gather external information to determine future market needs.
• Work with external parties to identify new requirements, products and solutions.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders to develop and maintain a strategic HVDC control & protection platform technology roadmap.
• Suggest areas for technological advancement and recommend approaches/programs to pursue.
• Evaluate and champion innovative ideas.
• Contribute to Intellectual Property management in terms of the creation of patents, participating in patent evaluation board, and reviewing patents to ensure freedom to operate.
• Mentor other engineers in the patenting process.
• Oversee various R&D programmes from conception through to industrialisation, integrating new technology smoothly into production and ensuring successful project delivery.
• Chair and act as technical authority in technology and product development gate reviews.
• Collaborate and promote technology synergies across GE Vernova businesses of Power Conversion Systems, Grid Automation and Power Technology, utilising shared expertise and resources.
• Support the commercial teams with their technical business development and sales.
• Support supply chain and procurement departments with technical expertise.
• Lead/support study teams addressing identified project challenges in focused technical areas.
• Lead/support the development of technical proposals to collaborate on the development of new technologies, functions and applications sponsored by external funding bodies.
• Support project technical tendering and delivery in the introduction of new solutions.
• Support the quality teams on major quality issues and act as technical authority in root cause analysis processes.
• Act as technical authority in competence management.
• Identify and recommend improvements in specific discipline knowledge or technical training needs.
• Contribute to creating structured training plans and associated training material.
• Deliver training and mentor others to deliver training.
• Act as technical authority in competence assessments of senior and principal engineers.
• Lead/support the creation and presentation of conference papers and act as a validator to ensure that papers prepared by others are relevant, correct and of a high standard.
• Act as a knowledge ambassador, providing technical education to external universities.
• Consult with and support the Chief Engineer’s Office in executing the office’s technical objectives to implement best practice technologies and methods.

The position requires a deep technical understanding of the technologies and design techniques required to develop, manufacture and maintain high‑availability, real‑time, flexible control systems. The successful candidate will deeply understand the intricacies of communication and computing platform technologies and techniques, and how to translate this into an effective value proposition to GE Vernova’s customers. This requires a strong foundation in both research and development and project engineering, having demonstrated significant technical depth and recognition as a domain expert across large‑scale, high‑reliability, high‑performance real‑time control systems, and able to apply state‑of‑the‑art technology to resolve complex technical challenges.

Masters degree or equivalent experience in the product development, manufacturing, maintenance of cost‑effective, low‑volume, high‑availability, high‑reliability, high‑performance, large‑scale, real‑time control and protection systems and interfacing to the high‑voltage measurement devices, switchgear and other equipment, within the harsh electrical and physical environments that typically exists within the high voltage switchyards, or similar environments, across the world.

Knowledge, proven experience and an in‑depth understanding of:

• High power electronics and switching techniques.
• Optical communication.
• Large and small scale networking systems operation, design and security.
• Cabinets design and manufacture.
• High speed PCB design and manufacture.
• FPGA design and test.
• Software design test.
• Operating systems and machine code.
• EMC design and test methods.
• Testing, verification and validation strategies for HVDC control & protection platforms.
• Safety by design.
• FMEA.
• Product Management for long operational life systems.
• Lean manufacturing principles.
• Acting as mentor, including to principal engineers.
• Research and development in power electronics control & protection platforms.
• System engineering approach towards identifying platform design choices which optimise and derisk site installation and commissioning.
• Future developments in HVDC control & protection platforms e.g. further digitalisation, centralisation and virtualisation.
• HVDC control & protection platform market and supply chain.
• Overview of and active involvement in pre‑standardisation and standardisation initiatives for HVDC control & protection platforms in international bodies such as IEEE, IEC and CIGRE.
• Understanding of typical relevant regulatory frameworks, grid codes and standards applicable to the realization of HVDC control & protection platforms.
• Familiarity with typical power system planning strategies, processes, and studies.
• HVDC control & protection platform pro’s and con’s, and the ability to develop a business case for different HVDC control & protection platform technologies based on a lifetime performance, costs and benefits analysis.
• Familiarity with patent evaluation, application and management.
• Open to regular business travel.

• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• Strong interpersonal and leadership skills.
• Leadership to pursue correct engineering process in adverse conditions.
• Able to interface and communicate effectively with all levels of the organization.
• Considered an industry expert and thought leader in the HVDC control & protection platform engineering discipline.

Location: Stafford, England, United Kingdom

Relocation Assistance: No

Seniority level: Mid‑Senior level

Employment type: Full‑time

Job function: Engineering and Information Technology

Industries: Electric Power Generation