Data Center Substation, Protection & Automation Engineer

About the role

Training and serving frontier AI models requires compute infrastructure at a scale and density that pushes past what conventional data center designs were built to handle. Anthropic's Data Center Infrastructure team is responsible for delivering that physical infrastructure — partnering with build partners, equipment manufacturers, and utilities to stand up facilities that can reliably power some of the largest accelerator clusters in the industry. At the scale we build, our campuses are typically served by dedicated high-voltage substations and a medium-voltage distribution network that may also integrate on-site generation and battery energy storage — and the protection, control, and automation layer is what keeps all of it selective, coordinated, and observable.

 

As a Data Center Substation, Protection & Automation Engineer, you'll own the protection and automation architecture across Anthropic's US portfolio — from the utility point of interconnection (POI) through the HV/MV substation, the MV distribution loop, and down into LV switchgear. You'll develop and maintain our protection philosophy and reference relay settings, run and review the short-circuit, coordination, and arc-flash studies that underpin them, design the substation automation and SCADA architecture, and define how relays and meters integrate into the electrical power monitoring system (EPMS) — giving operators real-time visibility and sequence-of-events data when something trips. You'll also be our technical lead on the protection side of utility interconnection — working relay settings, transfer-trip, and ride-through requirements with transmission owners and ISOs/RTOs.

 

Protection engineering and substation automation are the core of this role; substation physical design is a strong plus but not a prerequisite — we'd like to hear from protection and P&C engineers who have spent their careers on relays, schemes, and studies even if they haven't owned a substation general arrangement. You'll work closely with colleagues across the infrastructure team, our build partners' A/E firms, relay and switchgear vendors, and utility protection groups. Expect roughly 20–35% travel for witnessing factory acceptance and relay testing, and supporting site energization and commissioning.

Responsibilities

Protection engineering

• Own Anthropic's protection philosophy and basis of design across the electrical system — HV substation, MV distribution, generator and energy-storage interties, and LV switchgear — and maintain the reference relay settings and protection one-line templates our build partners design against

• Specify protective relays and develop relay settings for transformer, feeder, bus, generator, motor, and arc-flash protection applications, working across major platforms (e.g., SEL, GE Multilin, ABB, Siemens, Schneider)

• Perform and critically review short-circuit, protective-device coordination, and arc-flash studies; use findings to steer equipment selection, settings, and incident-energy mitigation

• Implement automatic transfer, load-shed, and restoration schemes in protection and automation logic, and make sure they stay secure and coordinated under every credible contingency

• Review protection and control design packages, relay settings calculations, and coordination studies from build partners and A/E firms against our basis of design, and drive closure on deviations and exceptions

Substation automation & SCADA

• Design the substation automation architecture for each site — IEC 61850 station and process bus, GOOSE messaging, RTUs/gateways, local HMI, sequence-of-events recording, and time synchronization — and drive standardization of that architecture across the portfolio

• Integrate protective relays, meters, and switchgear controls into the electrical power monitoring system (EPMS) and substation SCADA; define electrical points lists and event/waveform capture, applying the site alarm and HMI standards

• Help define the network topology, redundancy, and cybersecurity boundaries between substation automation, EPMS, and the facility BMS/DCIM layer, and how protection events surface to operations

• Evaluate and qualify relay, RTU, gateway, and EPMS platforms on technical merit, and work with supply chain to build a diversified vendor base that mitigates lead-time and single-source risk

Substation design & utility interface

• Review HV/MV substation design packages from build partners — single-line and three-line diagrams, bus configuration, general arrangement, equipment specifications, grounding-grid design, and control-building layout — and confirm the protection and control design is buildable and maintainable

• Work with local utilities, transmission owners, and ISOs/RTOs on interconnection protection requirements — relay settings submittals, transfer-trip and communications-assisted schemes, POI study review, and protection settings that satisfy ride-through and grid-code requirements

• Review the protection and control interface for on-site generation and battery energy storage interconnections, including anti-islanding, synchronizing, and intertie protection

• Support NERC PRC compliance for applicable facilities — settings documentation, misoperation analysis, and periodic maintenance and testing basis

Testing, commissioning & standards

• Develop relay test plans and factory and site acceptance test procedures for protection and automation systems, and witness FAT, relay secondary-injection testing, GOOSE messaging and end-to-end scheme testing, and integrated systems testing

• Review the protection and control steps of energization and switching methods of procedure (MOPs), support first-energization of substations and MV distribution, and resolve protection and control issues found in the field

• Lead root-cause analysis of protection operations and misoperations using relay event records, sequence-of-events data, and disturbance records, and feed findings back into settings and standards

• Build and continuously improve Anthropic's internal protection and automation standards — settings templates, scheme logic libraries, test procedures, and commissioning checklists — so each new site starts from a proven baseline

You may be a good fit if you

• Have 10+ years of experience in power system protection engineering, substation automation, or substation design for utility, heavy-industrial, or mission-critical facilities

• Hold a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related field, or have equivalent practical experience; Professional Engineer (PE) licensure is valued but not required

• Have deep, hands-on expertise applying and setting protective relays for transformers, feeders, buses, generators, and switchgear, and are fluent in at least one major relay platform (e.g., SEL, GE Multilin, ABB, Siemens)

• Are fluent in short-circuit, protective-device coordination, and arc-flash analysis and comfortable running or critically reviewing studies in tools such as SKM, ETAP, EasyPower, ASPEN, or CAPE

• Have hands-on experience integrating protective relays into substation automation or SCADA systems using protocols such as DNP3, Modbus, or IEC 61850, and understand RTU/gateway and sequence-of-events architecture

• Have worked on utility interconnection protection — relay settings submittals, transfer-trip or communications-assisted schemes, or point-of-interconnection protection requirements — from either the utility or the customer side

• Can read, interpret, and mark up single-line and three-line diagrams, AC and DC schematics, relay panel drawings, and wiring diagrams with confidence

• Have developed relay test plans and witnessed factory acceptance testing, secondary-injection testing, or field commissioning of protection and control systems

• Are familiar with the codes and standards that govern protection and substation work — such as the IEEE C37 series, IEEE 1584, NFPA 70/70E, and (for utility-connected or bulk-electric-system facilities) NERC PRC reliability standards

• Communicate clearly with both technical peers and non-specialist stakeholders, and are results-oriented, with a bias toward practical solutions and a willingness to pick up work outside your core remit when the team needs it

Strong candidates may also have

• HV/MV substation physical design experience — general arrangement, bus configuration, power transformer and HV breaker specification, grounding-grid design per IEEE 80, insulation coordination, and control-building layout

• Experience with protection and control for on-site generation (gas turbines, reciprocating engines, fuel cells) and battery energy storage systems, including anti-islanding, synchronizing, and microgrid transfer schemes

• Background in data center, hyperscaler, or other high-availability electrical distribution, and familiarity with critical-power topologies (2N, N+1, distributed redundant)

• Experience owning NERC PRC compliance evidence for a generation or transmission asset — settings basis documentation, misoperation reporting, and PRC-005 maintenance programs

• Proficiency with vendor relay engineering tools such as SEL AcSELerator, GE EnerVista, ABB PCM600, or Siemens DIGSI, and with IEC 61850 system configuration tools

• Designed IEC 61850 station- or process-bus systems with GOOSE-based protection or interlocking schemes

• Prior work at a utility, relay or switchgear manufacturer, protection-engineering consultancy, or hyperscaler serving large-load interconnections