Principal, Grid Innovation Engineer - Location Flexible

Requisition ID # 155921 

Job Category: Engineering / Science; Information Technology; Maintenance / Construction / Operations 

Job Level: Manager/Principal

Business Unit: Electric Engineering

Work Type: Hybrid

Job Location: Oakland

 

 

Team Summary 

Help us change the electric utility industry from the inside! Join a small, high-performing team within Pacific Gas & Electric Company that is scaling up distributed energy solutions to transform the electric grid from the edges inward.  

 

The Remote Grid team’s current mission is to stop catastrophic wildfires by deploying permanently islanded microgrids, Standalone Power Systems (SPS), with solar, batteries, and fuel-powered generation. Remote Grids deliver energy 24/7/365 to utility customers, as a full replacement for high-risk overhead or high-cost underground power lines. Remote Grids are also a cost-effective solution to address rebuild and reliability needs for rural, hard-to-reach customers.  

 

The vision of the Remote Grid team is to validate and scale up SPS and similar solutions as standard offerings in the utility toolkit. Currently PG&E has a fleet of six operational SPS, grow to two dozen in the next two years. See the Remote Grid Program page here, as well as media coverage from the PG&E newsroom here.  

  

Position Summary 

The Principal-level Grid Innovation Engineer will be a thought leader who builds the knowledge base and product vision of a new utility asset class, collaboratively architecting and executing the technical roadmap. The Remote Grid team is seeking an individual with one of two key skillsets: either Civil Engineering or Electrical Engineering in power systems. An experienced Civil Engineer is critical to maturation of the program because of the unique challenges to build and serve Remote Grids, including rural access roads and hilly terrain at project locations. An Electrical power systems engineer will lead continuous solution development to reduce costs and to increase safety, reliability, and decarbonization. (See the related job for Grid Innovation Engineer, Expert.) 

 

Grid Innovation Engineers also serve as project engineers, taking full ownership of the technical execution of each project to PG&E standards, developing new standards and process documentation, and supporting Operations and Maintenance (O&M) performance analytics and root cause investigation. A strong applicant will be an organized and diligent collaborator, proactively driving a broad range of technical and cross-functional tasks with PG&E technical subject matter experts, including four other Grid Innovation Engineers, and external Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) vendors.  

 

This position is hybrid, primarily working from your remote office and PG&E’s new Oakland General Office based on business need. In-person activities (about once a week) focus on synchronous collaboration, affinity building, ideation, or planning activities. The role will also require travel to sites throughout the PG&E service territory (about twice a month). 

  

PG&E is providing the salary range that the company in good faith believes it might pay for this position at the time of the job posting. This compensation range is specific to the locality of the job.  The actual salary paid to an individual will be based on multiple factors, including, but not limited to, specific skills, education, licenses or certifications, experience, market value, geographic location, and internal equity.  We would not anticipate that the individual hired into this role would land at or near the top half of the range described below, but the decision will be dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case.​ 

  

A reasonable salary range is:​ 

• Minimum Base Salary (Bay Area)    $151,000.00
• Mid Base Salary (Bay Area)    $204,000.00
• Maximum Base Salary (Bay Area)    $257,000.00

 

• Minimum Base Salary (California)    $143,000.00
• Mid Base Salary (California)    $194,000.00
• Maximum Base Salary (California)    $244,000.00

  

  

Core Responsibilities: 

Solution development and engineering process development: 

• Capture quantitative and qualitative learnings from SPS project experience, identifying and implementing improvements to specifications, standards, and processes 

• Build an informed, data-driven technical opinion for