Principal, Grid Planning
Kevala is seeking a Principal, Grid Planning to join our Professional & Advisory Services team. The ideal candidate would be a senior, experienced Power Systems Engineer at heart who is passionate about integrated grid planning and decarbonizing the grid while bringing strong technical subject matter knowledge, client engagement experience, and project execution capabilities in grid planning and modeling frameworks.
We are looking for a thoughtful, analytical, and pragmatic individual who will fit with our rebellious culture. Direct energy industry experience gathered through a combination of roles at a national lab or research organization, utility company(ies), energy service providers, and/or energy consultancies is critical in this role. The successful candidate should be an engineer capable of explaining and planning complex technical grid planning work (e.g., distribution and transmission grid modeling, hosting capacity analysis, DER interconnection, grid infrastructure upgrades design, and/or non-wires alternatives) to, both, technical and non-technical audiences.
What you will be doing
The Principal, Grid Planning is responsible for leading and supporting duties across three areas:
Grid Planning Delivery
- Serve as a leader - both internally and externally - you will be responsible for supporting the delivery of Kevala’s methodologies and capabilities related to integrated grid planning processes and analytics across utility transmission, subtransmission, distribution, generation, and load management functions.
- Foster deep, “trusted advisor” partnerships with clients through thoughtful, strategic client engagement, demonstrated industry expertise and a consistent ability to deliver work product on-time and on-budget.
- Partner internally with Kevala’s Platform, Product, and Analytics teams to refine and deliver cutting edge grid planning analytics tailored to client-specific requirements.
- Bring first-hand knowledge of and experience with utility grid planning processes as well as regulatory requirements and other best practices related to integrating power flow requirements across diverse planning scenarios and variables.
Strategy & Market Engagement
- Serve as a thought leader contributing to internal strategic product roadmap development and external client deployment of the Kevala platform.
- Act as technical steward of the end-to-end project delivery process, in collaboration with the executive, product, analytics, and platform teams, to provide power systems subject matter expertise in how client-specific integrated grid planning analytics and solutions are designed and delivered.
- Support business development by leading meaningful customer engagement and translating client needs into internal development requirements and deliverables.
- Productize more common service offerings and develop the business case for new service offerings.
- Participate in ambassadorial activities in support of the mission of the company workshops, presentations, conference presentations, chairing conference sessions, speaking in Regulator and Utility forums, and being interviewed by journalists, trade organizations and the like.
Grid Planning Leadership
- Lead Grid Planning-related analytics within Professional and Advisory Services, towards development and delivery of client-facing and other external research projects.
- Facilitate collaboration cross-functionally with the PAS team and matrixed partners (e.g., product, design, analytics and platform).
- Pursue ideas that challenge conventional approaches and encourage the team to experiment with new approaches and help them learn from failures.
- Act as a mentor to other team members and foster career growth of the team.
What you need to succeed
- 8+ years of related experience, including familiarity with distribution planning, operations, and/or interconnection of behind-the-meter distributed energy resource technologies and approaches, which includes: Industry standards such as IEEE 1547 and other grid operating standards; Distribution planning analyses including capacity planning, contingency analysis, and non-wires alternative studies; Operations and protection schemes as related to distribution planning.
- Electrical Engineering degree, Power Systems, or related.
- Knowledgeable about energy resources including how to model and integrate varying types of: Generation including solar and battery inverters and traditional generators; Load that includes electrical vehicle (EV) chargers, building electrification, and motors; Distribution grid equipment that includes voltage regulators, capacitor banks, and load tap changers.
- Experience with grid modeling tools such as Cyme, DEW, GridLab-D, and Open DSS.
- Knowledgeable about AMI and SCADA and common information models to represent this data.
- Demonstrated subject matter expertise across the areas of power systems engineering and transmission and/or distribution grid planning (including Distributed Energy Resources) Technical Management and/or Principal Investigator experience in leading power systems engineering analyses, research, or utility planning projects.
- Integrated Grid Planning experience and demonstrated thought leadership at a consultancy, utility, distributed electrification services provider, or other relevant entity.
- Proven ability to influence cross-functional teams without formal authority.
- A track record of empathetic and growth-oriented leadership.
- Experience supporting and performing grid planning analytics and process design-related modeling and consulting activities.
- Direct experience presenting complex analytical results to executives, regulators, and other stakeholders.
- Experience supporting and coordinating work with cross-functional project teams.
- Demonstrated thought leadership at a consultancy, utility, distributed electrification services provider, or other relevant entity.
- Proven ability to support, coordinate work, and influence cross-functional teams without formal authority.
- A track record of empathetic and growth-oriented leadership.
- Demonstrated strong verbal and written communication skills to audiences of varied technical backgrounds, including to individuals in leadership positions in large organizations.
What will make you stand out
- Experience interacting with software development, engineering, and data science teams.
- Direct work experience supporting service-based solutions and integration into highly secure client-based and cloud environments.
- Demonstrated experience in building, applying, and teaching integrated grid planning.
- Passion for designing new approaches to solving complex problems.
The salary range for this role is $145,000 to $190,000.
This is a fully remote role which can be located anywhere within the United States. Please note, actual salaries may vary based on factors including, but not limited to, education, experience, and location.