Lead Power Systems Engineer, R&D

ON.energy is building the power infrastructure that makes the AI era possible. As AI demand surges past what the grid and traditional data centers can support, ON.energy provides a new class of power technology proven at gigawatt scale and trusted by the world’s leading cloud and AI companies. Our systems are already deployed across 2.5 GW of hyper-scale campuses, validated by top U.S. national labs, and certified for grid-safe operation by major utilities. With real products in the field, we’re scaling faster than the grid can, transforming power from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage for the companies building the future.

Role Objective

The Lead Power Systems Engineer will direct power systems studies for ON.energy. This will spend the majority of their time planning, coordinating, and reporting of grid integration modeling efforts in support of interconnection studies, customer compliance verification, and ON.energy product improvement efforts. This role bridges simulation and hardware domains—translating EMT study findings into actionable controls development and hardware de-risking activities and allocating approximately a third of their time to policy interpretation, advisement, and influence. Residing within the R&D team, the position fosters future growth and technology evolution by ensuring ON.energy’s inverter-based products meet and exceed grid interconnection requirements while continuously advancing performance through model-driven insights.

Key Responsibilities

EMT Modeling and Interconnection Support

• EMT Study Planning and Coordination: Serve as the primary technical lead for EMT modeling activities. Define study scopes, develop workplans, and coordinate timelines across internal engineering teams and external stakeholders (utilities, ISOs, consultants) to support interconnection applications and compliance milestones.
• Model Development and Maintenance: Oversee the development, validation, and maintenance of detailed EMT models of ON.energy’s energy storage systems in PSCAD, PSSE, and equivalent platforms. Ensure contractor models accurately represent inverter controls, protection schemes, and plant-level behavior under steady-state and transient conditions.
• Interconnection Study Execution: Perform and review EMT studies required by transmission providers and ISOs, including fault response, frequency and voltage ride-through, sub-synchronous resonance screening, and weak-grid stability assessments. Prepare technical reports and present findings to utilities and grid operators.

Customer Compliance Verification

• Grid Code Compliance Analysis: Verify that ON.energy’s products meet applicable grid codes, interconnection standards (IEEE 2800, NERC, regional ISO requirements), and customer-specific performance specifications through simulation and analysis.
• Technical Reporting: Produce clear, detailed compliance reports for customers, regulators, and internal stakeholders. Document study assumptions, model configurations, simulation results, and any required mitigations or design modifications.
• Customer and Utility Interface: Serve as a technical point of contact for customer and utility engineering teams during interconnection and commissioning processes, addressing modeling questions and resolving compliance gaps.

Controls Development and Validation Support

• Controls Co-Development: Partner with the controls engineering team to translate EMT study findings into control system requirements and tuning recommendations. Support the design and validation of plant control strategies to prototype higher layer functions in the ON.energy EMS.
• Model-to-Hardware Correlation: Collaborate with test engineers to correlate control simulation predictions with Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) and field test results. Identify discrepancies, refine models, and close the loop between simulation and measured performance.
• Validation Campaigns: Define simulation-based test cases and acceptance criteria that feed into HIL and lab validation plans. Review test data against model predictions and recommend firmware or controls adjustments.

Hardware De-risking and Product Improvement

• Architecture Impact Analysis: Use transient and dynamic modeling to evaluate the impact of proposed hardware changes (inverter topology, filter design, protection settings) on system-level grid performance before physical prototyping.
• Failure Mode and Sensitivity Studies: Conduct parametric sweeps, contingency analyses, and failure-mode simulations to identify design vulnerabilities an