Senior Project Lead Engineer

At ABB, we help industries run leaner and cleaner—and every person here makes that happen. You’ll be empowered to lead, supported to grow, and proud of the impact we create together. Join us and help run what runs the world.

This position reports to:

Electrical Engineering Manager

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ABB is seeking a Senior Project Lead Engineer with a strong background in Protection and Controls to join our team. Working at ABB offers a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience across the full spectrum of power system engineering. Our group actively engages in substation design, protection and controls engineering, power system studies, and the design and implementation of power management systems. Being part of this team allows engineers to collaborate across multiple disciplines, contribute to complex and impactful projects, and develop a well-rounded understanding of modern power infrastructure up to 69kV.

The work model for the role is: hybrid #LI-Hybrid

This role is contributing to the Automation Energy Industries division in Houston, TX.

Your role and responsibilities:

• Lead and support engineering projects, ensuring successful delivery through effective technical leadership, coordination, and adherence to project scope, schedule, and quality expectations.
• Create and review substation and electrical building integration design packages and follow those projects from the conceptual stage to construction completion.
• Lead customer technical meetings, design reviews, and interdisciplinary engineering coordination meetings.
• Serve as the technical lead for Protection and Controls across projects, providing guidance, standards, and technical oversight to the engineering team.
• Develop and review protection and control system designs, including relay selection, protection philosophies, settings development, configuration, and coordination.
• Support and mentor team members on protection and control best practices, helping build capability within the group
• Review engineering deliverables to ensure technical accuracy, consistency, and compliance with industry standards, project specifications, and internal engineering practices.
• Coordinate and provide technical oversight of multi-discipline vendors and subcontractors, ensuring alignment with project requirements, engineering standards, schedules, and overall project objectives.
• Support proposal development, engineering estimates, technical risk assessments, and engineering execution planning.

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Additional tasks with varying scope depending on experience level:

• Perform and review power system studies (e.g., short circuit, protection coordination, arc flash, load flow) to support protection design and validate system performance.
• Design/review/implementation of power management systems (PMS).

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering.
• 10+ years of experience in power systems engineering, with experience in Protection and Controls.
• Strong knowledge of protection principles, relay coordination, and protection scheme design for medium and high voltage power systems.
• Hands-on experience with protective relay configuration and settings development (e.g., SEL, GE, Siemens, ABB or similar platforms).
• Experience interpreting power system studies such as short circuit, protection coordination, load flow, and arc flash.
• Familiarity with power system analysis software (e.g., ETAP, SKM PowerTools, EasyPower, PSCAD, or similar).
• Working knowledge of substation design and electrical building integration, including protection and control system interfaces.
• Familiarity supporting or implementing power management systems (PMS) or SCADA-based monitoring and control systems is considered an asset.
• Strong understanding of relevant industry standards and codes (IEEE, NFPA, NEC, ANSI, IEC, or equivalent as applicable).
• Demonstrated experience serving as the Lead Project Engineer or Engineering Lead on complex engineering projects.
• Proven ability to lead multidisciplinary engineering teams and coordinate technical execution across multiple concurrent projects.
• Excellent technical problem-solving, communication, and documentation skills.
• Ability to mentor junior engineers and provide technical guidance within the team.
• Professional Engineering designation (PE) strongly preferred.
• You enjoy occasionally working in the field and traveling to customer and manufacturing sites to support project execution (approx. 25% travel).

More about us:

The Energy Industries Division serves a wide range of industrial sectors, including hydrocarbons, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, power generation and water. With its integrated solutions that automate, digitalize and electrify operations, the Division is committed to supporting traditional industries in their efforts to decarbonize. The Division also supports the development, integration and scaling up of new and renewable energy models. The Division’s goal is to help customers adapt and succeed in the rapidly changing global energy transition. Harnessing data, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), the Division brings over 50 years of domain expertise delivering solutions designed to improve energy, process and production efficiency, as well as reduce risk, operational cost and capital cost, while minimizing waste for customers, from project start-up and throughout the entire plant lifecycle.

Building a cleaner, smarter future takes all kinds of minds: the curious, the courageous, and the creative. That's why we welcome people from all backgrounds and experiences.

Ready to make an impact?

Apply today or visit https://www.abb.com to learn more about the impact of our solutions across the globe.