Principal Power Systems Control Architect

American Terawatt • San Francisco, CA

12d • Onsite

About The Position

American Terawatt is building a new industrial electric grid for the United States, focusing on distributed, fault-tolerant control loops for safety and stability. They design and deploy advanced power transmission systems for large industrial loads like AI datacenters and automated manufacturing. Their unique HVDC terminal design is standardized, modular, and integrates energy storage, aiming to make interconnection fast, simple, and cheap. The company is hiring a Principal Power Systems Control Engineer to design and deliver the Control and Protection (C&P) systems for their HVDC terminals and transmission network. This is a hands-on technical leadership role reporting directly to the CTO, with the opportunity to build a controls team as the company scales. The role involves owning the C&P architecture, real-time controls software, validation, and commissioning.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field.
• 15+ years architecting and delivering control systems in safety-critical domains (electric utility, aerospace, robotics, EV, or similar).
• Strong control theory fundamentals: feedback/feedforward control, state estimation, and stability analysis of cascaded multi-loop systems, from fast inner loops through plant-level dynamics.
• Hands-on real-time embedded control systems development experience (C/C++ on RTOS or bare-metal platforms) with modern software practices including version control, code review, and CI/CD pipelines running automated SIL regression.
• Experience developing and validating controls in simulation (PSCAD, EMTP, MATLAB/Simulink, PLECS) and on HIL/SIL platforms (RTDS, OPAL-RT).
• Strong debugging and root-cause analysis skills across software, firmware, and hardware boundaries.

Nice To Haves

• Master's or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Controls, or Power Systems.
• 20+ years of experience delivering control systems in safety-critical domains including driving major architecture changes end-to-end.
• Power electronics control (inverters, converters, rectifiers), ideally VSC HVDC, spanning valve and submodule control through pole, converter, and system level.
• BESS and plant-level control (EMS, PPC, or dispatch), including grid-forming and grid-following inverter control strategies.
• Fault-tolerant and distributed control architectures (redundancy, hot-standby failover, autonomous multi-controller coordination) and protection coordination.
• Deploying control systems to production hardware and participating in commissioning.
• Exposure to power systems modeling, load flow analysis, or transient stability studies.
• Familiarity with power-system and industrial communication standards (IEC 61850, DNP3, Modbus, CAN) and OT security/functional safety frameworks (IEC 61508, IEC 62443, NERC CIP).

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end C&P design for terminals and transmission systems, from protection philosophy through deployed controls, partnering with OEMs, in-house engineers, and key consultants to drive major architecture changes.
• Architect and own the development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of control systems software deployed to OEM and American Terawatt’s hardware.
• Work closely with the power systems engineering team to co-design transmission systems and components to serve the HVDC transmission network.
• Develop simulation and physical testing platforms to verify performance and robustness of control systems before deployment at scale.
• Lead in-situ commissioning of controls software for deployments.
• Define and own the team’s controls software development practices, including CI/CD pipelines, version control workflows, issue tracking, testing standards, and design review processes.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage, including 75% coverage for dependents and spouses.
• Up to $300/month reimbursement for gym and wellness expenses, or Bay Club membership for SF-based employees.
• Lunch provided daily when working from an office.
• Unlimited PTO with manager approval, plus company-wide office closures for July 4 week and one week in December.
• Laptop of choice provided.
• Convenient SF office location on the Embarcadero and near public transit (pre-tax transit benefit).
• Employee contribution 401(k) program.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior