Principal Electrical Engineer - Mission-Critical Facilities

Job Description Principal Electrical Engineer - Mission-Critical Facilities

Position Overview A Houston-based EPC firm is building a dedicated mission-critical infrastructure practice and is seeking a Principal Electrical Engineer to help establish its technical direction. This individual will serve as the senior electrical authority for data center programs and will influence system architecture, engineering standards, project delivery, and client strategy. The position requires more than design-review capability.

It calls for a leader who can define resilient power solutions, explain risk to clients, guide multidisciplinary teams, and help a growing organization develop a repeatable approach to data center execution.

Key Accountabilities

• Establish the electrical design philosophy, technical standards, specifications, and quality expectations for mission-critical projects.
• Lead electrical planning from incoming utility service through distribution to critical IT and mechanical loads.
• Direct the design of substations, medium- and low-voltage switchgear, transformers, generators, UPS systems, PDUs, busway, grounding, and associated controls.
• Translate availability objectives into appropriate redundancy arrangements, including N, N+1, 2N, distributed-redundant, and block-redundant configurations.
• Evaluate system topology for reliability, maintainability, concurrent maintenance, selective coordination, and fault isolation.
• Lead or approve load-flow, short-circuit, protective-device coordination, arc-flash, grounding, and equipment-duty studies.
• Review designs at formal project milestones and identify technical, construction, procurement, and commissioning risks.
• Coordinate electrical requirements with cooling systems, building controls, life-safety systems, telecommunications infrastructure, and structural design.
• Advise clients during site planning, concept selection, capacity phasing, design development, and execution.
• Support proposals, interviews, technical presentations, and strategic pursuits.
• Build relationships with manufacturers of switchgear, UPS equipment, generators, transformers, busway, and modular power assemblies.
• Advance the use of prefabricated power skids, electrical rooms, and E-Houses where they improve schedule and installation quality.
• Provide technical oversight during construction, energization, integrated systems testing, and commissioning.
• Develop engineers through mentoring, peer reviews, and clearly documented design practices.
• Balance several fast-moving projects while maintaining consistent technical governance.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree: in Electrical Engineering from an ABET-accredited program.
• Active Professional Engineer license: required.
• Experience: At least 15 years of progressive electrical engineering experience.
• Significant work: involving data centers, mission-critical buildings, or similarly resilient electrical infrastructure.
• Expertise: in large-scale power distribution from utility interconnection to end-use critical loads.
• Strong working knowledge: of NEC, NFPA, IEEE, and other applicable electrical requirements.
• Demonstrated proficiency: with ETAP, SKM, or a comparable system-analysis platform.
• Record: of leading multidisciplinary work and communicating directly with sophisticated clients.
• Ability: to make and defend high-impact technical decisions under demanding schedule conditions.

Preferred Experience

• Hyperscale, colocation, cloud, or enterprise data center projects.
• Application of Uptime Institute Tier concepts or comparable availability criteria.
• EPC or design-build project delivery.
• Modular electrical systems and prefabricated power infrastructure.
• Microgrids, battery storage, renewable integration, or onsite generation.
• Participation in integrated systems testing and data center commissioning.

Leadership Mandate

This person will help define how the organization designs mission-critical electrical infrastructure. Success will be measured through technical consistency, client confidence, constructability, system resilience, and the development of a strong electrical engineering team.