Principal Power Systems Control Architect

Department: Engineering

Location: San Francisco

Employment Type: FullTime

About American Terawatt

American Terawatt is building a new industrial electric grid for the United States. At the core of our grid - where power systems engineering becomes real - are the distributed, fault-tolerant control loops that keep it safe and stable.

We design and deploy advanced power transmission systems, serving large industrial loads, gigawatts at a time. Our systems deliver power to everything from frontier AI datacenters to advanced automated manufacturing, refineries, mines, and more.

We make interconnection fast, simple, and cheap. On our network, generation owners get their projects online faster, delivering abundant power at competitive prices.

The backbone of American Terawatt’s network is HVDC transmission, anchored by our unique terminal design. American Terawatt’s HVDC terminals are standardized, modular, and natively integrate energy storage. Each terminal is designed to expand to operate as a full node on our future HVDC transmission network.

About the role

We are hiring a Principal Power Systems Control Engineer to design and deliver the Control and Protection (C&P) systems at the core of American Terawatt's HVDC terminals and transmission network.
You will work directly with the CTO, power systems engineering team, OEMs, and key consultants, taking ownership of C&P architecture, real-time controls software, validation, and commissioning.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role for someone who wants to own the C&P platform for a new transmission network, deployed on gigawatt-scale power systems.

This is currently a senior individual contributor role, with the opportunity to build a controls team and grow into broader technical ownership as the company scales. You will report directly to the CTO.

What you will own

As the Principal Power Systems Control Architect at American Terawatt, you will:

• Own end-to-end C&P design for our 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.

What success looks like

You will help shape the exact roadmap, but we expect success in this role to include the following early milestones:

In your first month

• Review our existing terminal and transmission designs, deployment plans, and C&P work.

• Identify the most important technical gaps, risks, and decisions that need to be addressed.

• Synthesize this information into a C&P roadmap that defines where the architecture needs to go, the sequence of work to get there, and what you need (people, platforms, etc.) to execute.
  

By month six

• Define the initial C&P architecture for the first terminal, including protection zones, fault responses, and key operating modes.

• Demonstrate key control functions in simulation against representative operating and fault cases, and stand up the initial HIL/SIL test platform to begin producing closed-loop results.

• Establish standard practices for controls software development, testing, and commissioning.

What we are looking for

Required Experience

• 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.
  
  

Preferred Experience

• 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).
  
  

Details

• Travel: 25%

• Reports to: CTO
  
  

Compensation & Benefits

• Compensation: Competitive compensation package commensurate with experience, including salary and material equity participation.

• Healthcare: Medical, dental, and vision coverage, including 75% coverage for dependents and spouses.

• Wellness: Up to $300/month reimbursement for gym and wellness expenses, or Bay Club membership for SF-based employees.

• Meals: Lunch provided daily when working from an office.

• Time off: Unlimited PTO with manager approval, plus company-wide office closures for July 4 week and one week in December.

• Additional perks: Laptop of choice provided, convenient SF office location on the Embarcadero and near public transit (pre-tax transit benefit), and employee contribution 401(k) program.