Start with the assets and the decisions

"Substation engineer" can mean a designer who never visits a site, a commissioning engineer who lives on one, or a standards lead who signs off other people's work. The title won't tell you which. Before the search, write down three things: the assets the engineer will work on, the decisions they'll own, and the split between office and field.

That description decides the market. A protection engineer who sets relays for transmission substations and one who tests distribution reclosers are both "protection and controls", and they are rarely interchangeable on day one.

The disciplines, and what to look for

Protection and controls engineer

  • Owns: relay schemes, settings, coordination studies and control logic that detect faults and isolate equipment.
  • Look for: the relay platforms and voltage levels they've worked on, and whether they've tested and commissioned their own settings.

Substation engineer

  • Owns: physical and electrical substation design, such as layout, bus, grounding and equipment specification, and sometimes commissioning.
  • Look for: projects taken from design through energization, and the standards they designed to.

Transmission planning engineer

  • Owns: power flow, contingency and stability studies that decide what the grid needs as load and generation change, including large-load requests.
  • Look for: the study tools they've used, the utility or RTO context, and a study whose results changed a project.

Distribution engineer

  • Owns: feeder planning, line design, new service and the lower-voltage network customers connect to.
  • Look for: how they balance standards, cost and schedule on real jobs, and how they work with field crews.

SCADA and OT engineer

  • Owns: the control systems, communications and field devices that let operators see and control the network.
  • Look for: the systems and protocols they've supported, and their experience working within NERC CIP or other security requirements.

Grid operations and asset management engineer

  • Owns: engineering support for operating the network, distribution automation, and the data and decisions behind maintaining and replacing assets.
  • Look for: work alongside the control room or field crews, and an asset or automation decision they supported with data.

Civil and structural engineer

  • Owns: foundations, structures, siting and civil design for transmission lines, substations and other utility infrastructure.
  • Look for: utility or heavy infrastructure projects they designed, and how they coordinated with electrical engineers and construction.

Environmental and permitting engineer

  • Owns: environmental compliance, permits and the regulatory engineering that lets utility projects and operations go ahead.
  • Look for: permits they took from application to approval, the agencies they worked with, and how they kept a project on schedule.

Nuclear engineer

  • Owns: plant systems engineering, design changes and the licensing support the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires.
  • Look for: a design change they supported through the plant's change and review process, and how they documented it.

Gas engineer

  • Owns: gas system design, pipeline integrity and compression, under federal pipeline safety rules.
  • Look for: an integrity assessment or system design they worked on and what it led to.

Water and wastewater engineer

  • Owns: treatment plants, water distribution, wastewater collection and treatment, and the infrastructure behind them.
  • Look for: the facilities and processes they've worked on, and a problem they solved with operating data.

Definitions for these disciplines and terms are in our utility hiring glossary.

Licenses and regulatory context

Decide whether the role needs a Professional Engineer license, for example to seal drawings, or whether it suits an engineer working toward one. Licensing rules vary by state, so your organization defines the requirement and verifies the license. We use what you give us to focus the search.

Regulatory context matters too. Some protection and planning work falls under NERC reliability standards, nuclear work under the NRC, and gas work under federal pipeline safety rules. Someone who has worked inside those requirements approaches the job differently from someone who hasn't, so say which ones apply.

Office, field or both

Be specific about site access, travel, storm or outage support, and on-call work. Engineers decide early on whether a role fits their life, and a vague answer here loses good candidates before the first conversation.

Plan succession before it's urgent

Where one senior engineer holds the history of a system or a set of standards, the hire that matters most is the successor, made while that engineer is still there to hand over. A planning conversation can start before headcount is approved.

Interview questions that test real work

  1. "Walk me through a settings change or design you were responsible for, and how it was checked." A strong answer covers the reason, the calculation, the review and the field result.
  2. "Tell me about a study or design whose results changed a project." A strong answer explains what they found and how they made the case.
  3. "Describe a problem you found during commissioning or in the field." A strong answer shows how they diagnosed it and what they changed in their own process afterward.
  4. "Which standards or regulations shaped your last project, and how?" A strong answer is specific, not a list of acronyms.
  5. "What's a decision you'd make differently on a past project?" A strong answer shows judgment and honesty.
  6. "How do you document a decision so the next engineer understands it?" A strong answer shows they think about the people after them.
  7. For leads: "How do you review another engineer's work?" A strong answer covers what they check first and how they give feedback.

What to put in the job description

  • The assets, systems or facilities, including voltage levels where they apply
  • The decisions the engineer will own, and who reviews their work
  • The tools, standards and regulations they'll work with
  • License requirements, and whether an engineer working toward a license will be considered
  • The split between office and field, travel, site access, storm or outage support and on-call
  • Seniority and reporting line
  • The compensation range, if you have one
  • Which requirements are essential, and where adjacent experience fits

Where utility engineers come from

  • Other utilities. Operating history with real assets and standards.
  • Consulting and design firms. Breadth across many clients and projects. Ask what they owned through construction and energization, not only design.
  • Equipment makers and field service. Strong commissioning and testing experience for protection and substation roles.
  • Military and naval nuclear programs. A common route into nuclear plant roles.
  • Adjacent industries. Industrial power, water treatment and pipeline operators, where the engineering carries over and the regulatory context can be learned.

Common hiring mistakes

  • Hiring for a title instead of the assets and decisions.
  • Leaving field and on-call expectations vague until late in the process.
  • Requiring a license for a role that doesn't need one, or skipping it for one that does.
  • Waiting for a senior engineer to give notice before hiring the successor.
  • Screening out consulting engineers who could make the move with the right onboarding.