Renewable Operations Control Center Director

Zelestra

47d•$145,000 - $175,000•Onsite

About The Position

Join Zelestra: Powering a Carbon-Free Future. At Zelestra, we’re driving global decarbonization with innovative, large-scale renewable energy solutions. With 20+ years of experience in 13 countries and a portfolio of 20 GW of carbon-free projects, we deliver results that matter. Our 800+ professionals thrive on collaboration, sustainability, and making a real impact—backed by EQT, one of the world’s largest fund managers. Ready to help shape a sustainable world? Join us! Zelestra is a global, vertically integrated renewable energy company developing, building, and operating solar PV, battery energy storage (BESS), and wind assets at utility scale. Our U.S. operating portfolio is expanding rapidly — adding roughly 1.0 to 1.5 GW of new capacity each year — and that growth is reshaping how we run, monitor, and optimize our fleet. We are investing in a digital-first operating model anchored by a next-generation Remote Operations Control Center we call NOVA Hub (Next-Gen Operations and Value Analytics Hub).

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Science, Computer Science, or a closely related field.
10+ years of progressive experience in power generation, utility, or renewable energy operations, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role.
Strong working knowledge of SCADA, historian, CMMS, ERP, and OT/IT integration in a generation environment.
Experience selecting and managing technology vendors, system integrators, and managed service providers; strong commercial and contracting acumen.
Demonstrated AI / data / digital leadership: have personally led the deployment of analytics, machine learning, predictive maintenance, digital twins, or comparable digital initiatives that produced measurable operating outcomes.
Excellent executive communication skills — able to translate between operations, engineering, data science, finance, and the C-suite.
Authorized to work in the United States; able to be on-site at NOVA Hub.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree (MS / MBA) preferred.

Responsibilities

Lead end-to-end design, build, and launch of NOVA Hub — physical control room, operator workstations, video walls, redundant connectivity, and the 24/7/365 operating model including shift structure, escalation paths, and SOPs.
Partner with IT, OT, Cybersecurity, and NERC teams to deliver a hardened, compliant facility — SCADA, historian, secure remote access, MFA, network segmentation, and the IT hub backbone.
Own vendor selection and implementation for data analytics, asset monitoring, logbook, and communications platforms.
Build the ROCC organization — define roles and recruit operators, data analysts, server/database and network engineers, and supporting Center of Expertise functions.
Operate NOVA Hub as the single point of real-time monitoring and control for the U.S. solar, BESS, and wind portfolio across ERCOT, MISO, and additional ISOs as the fleet grows.
Own ROCC performance KPIs — availability, response time, energy yield, MTTR, predictive accuracy, false-positive rate, safety, and operational cost per MW.
Coordinate with field response, asset management, performance analytics, and commercial/trading to convert real-time signals into operating outcomes.
Lead incident management, emergency response, business continuity, and disaster recovery for control center operations.
Ensure NERC reliability and CIP compliance, including readiness as the fleet crosses Medium Impact thresholds.
Build the underlying data foundation — a clean, governed, high-frequency platform integrating SCADA, CMMS, ERP, weather, market, and sensor data into a single operations data layer.
Lead the AI roadmap from pilot to production — drones, IoT sensors, computer vision inspections, anomaly detection, digital twins, and generative-AI assistants — with adoption anchored to measurable ROI (higher availability, fewer truck rolls, longer asset life, lower O&M cost per MWh).
Foster a culture of continuous improvement, blameless post-mortems, and data-driven decision-making across the organization’s operations.