Senior Director, Testing & Commissioning

SOLV Energy is an engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) and solar services provider for utility solar, high voltage substation and energy storage markets across North America.

Job Description Summary:

The Senior Director will build and lead a centralized Testing & Commissioning (T&C) Department, bringing together project- and business-unit–specific commissioning efforts into a unified operational shared service structure. This role will oversee utility-scale PV, BESS, HV, Technical Service, and SCADA commissioning activities across North America to ensure safe, consistent, and high-quality project delivery. Through centralization, the Senior Director will drive scalability, standardization, and efficiency while enabling SOLV Energy’s growth and delivering stronger outcomes for clients and utility partners.

Job Description:

*This job description reflects management's assignment of essential functions; it does not prescribe or restrict the tasks that may be assigned

Position Responsibilities and Duties:

• Set the vision and multi-year roadmap for a centralized T&C organization covering PV, BESS, nd HV substation, and SCADA scopes; aligning with corporate goals and BU delivery plans.

• Establish and reinforce a safety-first culture across all commissioning activities, ensuring compliance with OSHA, NFPA, and company safety policies, and holding teams and partners accountable for safe work practices.

• Lead recruiting, hiring, and development of a high-performing commissioning organization, building technical and leadership bench strength across regions.

• Establish governance for commissioning phases (design-phase Cx planning, FAT, SAT, site Cx, performance testing, PAC/FAC) including RACI and handoffs within Operations, Field Personal, Engineering and Services / O&M.

• Institutionalize and maintain compliance with key codes/standards affecting grid-tied solar+storage and substations, including IEEE 1547/1547.1 for interconnection, UL 1741 SB for advanced inverters, NFPA 855 for ESS installations, UL 9540(A) for BESS, and OSHA 29 CFR 1910.269 for electric-power work practices.

• Ensure HV acceptance/functional testing aligns to ANSI/NETA ATS (latest edition) and utility interconnection requirements; own the corporate interpretation and application of ATS across regions.

• Build and maintain the enterprise commissioning portfolio plan and capacity model (people, partners, test gear) to meet regional needs and optimize when overlapping schedules; escalate risk early.

• Stand up regional Cx leadership and scalable delivery teams (e.g., PV/BESS Cx engineers, HV relay/test leads, on-site SCADA techs).

• Develop and standardize an enterprise commissioning playbook: PV block/collection, inverter/PCS, MV/HV equipment, relay/protection, network/SCADA, BESS functional and performance.

• Ensure rigorous test documentation: procedures, pre-energization checks, protection settings, point-to-point/SCADA, BESS functional (charge/discharge, EMS controls), and performance tests aligned to interconnection and PPA metrics. (EPRI BESS lifecycle guidance.)

• Drive root-cause analysis for commissioning defects and systemic fixes; maintain lessons-learned libraries and standards updates.

• Serve as executive liaison with customers, utilities and owners’ engineers on energization plans, relay/SCADA cutovers, grid support functions (e.g., ride through, Volt/VAR, frequency-Watt) and test acceptance. (Advanced inverter/UL-1741-SB & IEEE-1547 feature set.)

• Track and publish KPIs: schedule adherence to Cx milestones, NCR and rework trends, first-pass yield on energizations, protection mis-ops, punch-list aging, and utility acceptance cycle time. (Metrics themes consistent with commissioning leadership roles.)

• Qualify and manage specialty Cx vendors (NETA test firms, relay labs, HV terminations) against ATS and OEM guidance; maintain bench depth for peaks.

• Evaluate and deploy new methods and tools (digital test forms, automated relay test sets, site data historians, IV-curve/PQA analytics) to improve commissioning throughput and quality. (Industry best-practice evolution reflected in public BESS & HV sources.)

Minimum Skills or Experience Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, related technical field or equivalent work experience.

• 15+ years of experience in commissioning, design, or operations of utility-scale PV, B