Lead Engineer - Instrumentation & Controls, Gas Power Generation
About the job
- 10+ years of progressive engineering experience in instrumentation and controls design for industrial projects, with a strong preference for power generation.
- At least 5 years of experience with instrumentation, controls, and communications specification, procurement, installation, and commissioning.
- A bachelor's degree in engineering or a related field from an ABET-accredited college, or relevant equivalent industry experience, is required.
- Knowledge of reciprocating engine and gas turbine equipment and associated balance-of-plant equipment and applications.
- Knowledge of multiple communication protocols and their integration, such as MODBUS, Profi-Bus, and Foundation Field-Bus.
- Familiarity with computer tools and programs used for instrumentation and controls programming and commissioning of balance-of-plant equipment, including communications protocols, vibration monitoring, instrumentation programming and calibration, and transformer monitoring.
- Familiarity with Continuous Emissions Monitoring Systems specifications, regulatory protocols, equipment, commissioning, and certification.
- Familiarity with emissions control systems, primarily Selective Catalytic Reduction specifications, regulatory requirements, equipment, controls design, commissioning, and safety compliance.
- Familiarity with engineering standards and best practices related to power generation.
- Ability to influence and persuade groups toward common objectives.
- Oral, written, listening, and presentation communication skills for working with owners, vendors, and employees.
- Valid independent work authorization is required; the company does not sponsor H-1B visas or permanent residency.
- Develop or review instrumentation and controls design for gas plants, reciprocating engines, gas turbines, and associated balance-of-plant systems and equipment; collaborate with original equipment manufacturers and owners on design.
- Design controls for balance-of-plant systems and collaborate with project teams, utilities, vendors, and third-party engineering firms to deliver safe, reliable, compliant designs.
- Develop metrics and set objectives related to equipment protection and controls engineering obligations.
- Travel to client offices and project sites as needed to foster client relationships, share ideas, and solve problems; travel increases during construction and commissioning.
- Provide root-cause analysis support for company engineering and instrumentation and controls items.
- Verify equipment controls and protection are implemented according to design, ensure safety standards are followed, and employ Management of Change as needed.
- Ensure projects comply with applicable industry standards, including provisions for reciprocating engine and combustion turbine installations and fuel gas systems.
- Verify the design basis for power-block instrumentation and controls through commissioning processes and documentation, and support development of those processes and documents.
- Coordinate integration with business units responsible for electrical design and commissioning, including protection and generation control, generator step-up and auxiliary transformers, medium-voltage switchgear and collection, generator protection and synchronizing, station service and emergency power, grounding and lightning protection, cable and raceway systems, and lighting.
- Review electrical interface design for balance-of-plant equipment, including fuel gas conditioning and compression, inlet air and filtration, lube oil and cooling, water treatment, emissions control, fire protection and detection, and plant control system integration.
- Stay current on technologies and industry practices and identify opportunities to apply suitable available technology to projects.
- Support creation and maintenance of design-basis document libraries for company segments and ensure procurement managers have current client and scope design bases before project estimating kickoff meetings.
- Support engineering leads in reviewing owner, contractor, and company scopes for completeness and identifying gaps or overlaps, particularly at interfaces among generating-equipment suppliers, balance-of-plant vendors, and company scope.
- Support constructability reviews of engine and turbine power-block layouts, modular and skid-mounted equipment, and preassembled cable and conduit systems to reduce field labor and improve installation quality.
- Support onsite instrumentation and controls requirements for plant startup, first fire, synchronization, and performance testing; ensure commissioning requirements are understood and followed, and review commissioning documents.
- Verify complete equipment protection and controls for power blocks and balance of plant.
- Serve as the escalation point for instrumentation and controls commissioning issues, including protection and control settings, monitoring systems, controls testing, and controller interfaces.
- Review design, installation, and commissioning of power-generation block and balance-of-plant instrumentation and controls from preliminary engineering through final review.
- Review redundancy of instrumentation, controls hardware, and logic design; review winterization of instrumentation and control devices; and review control loop diagrams, instrument loop diagrams, controls narratives, and logic.
- Own controller communication protocol and interface implementation, including the distributed control system at power-block level and original equipment manufacturer controllers.
- Verify data historian configuration and representation of available data points, including internally configured points, and ensure the distributed control system provides points for the historian.
- Mentor junior engineers and support development of internal instrumentation and controls engineering standards and design practices.
- Read and understand project instrumentation and controls scopes in early phases and develop plans incorporating redundancy, reliability, and cost efficiency into proposals.
- Work with internal and external stakeholders to develop clear instrumentation and controls scopes of work; review change implications, provide recommendations, and serve as a technical resource for preconstruction and operations teams throughout the project lifecycle.
- Review supplier contracts and subcontracts for instrumentation and controls scope and identify opportunities to streamline work and reduce waste.
- Prioritize the company’s stated cultural principles and adhere to the National Society of Professional Engineers' code of conduct.
- A Professional Engineering license is preferred but not required.
About the company
Blattner builds critical infrastructure with a focus on renewable energy projects, using an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) approach to deliver turnkey solar, wind, and storage facilities for utilities and developers. With over 115 years of construction experience, it handles large-scale installations across the United States, drawing on past work in railroads, highways, dams, and mines. Blattner is the parent of Blattner Energy and D.H. Blattner & Sons and is part of the Quanta Services family, which provides broad resources and capabilities. Its goal is to support America’s energy transition by delivering reliable, large‑scale renewable projects and other essential infrastructure.
Company Size
201-500
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
N/A
Headquarters
Avon, Minnesota
Founded
N/A
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Quanta installed over 6,000 MW in 2025, reinforcing Blattner's backlog and credibility.
- The 2025 three-year Built Robotics agreement expands automation across U.S. solar projects.
- Shoals' 10 GW supply agreement signals sustained demand from Blattner's utility-scale pipeline.
What critics are saying
- Built Robotics dependency deepens if autonomous deployment slips at 15-20 simultaneous solar sites.
- Solar construction concentration ties Blattner to Quanta's capital allocation and project pipeline.
- Any major safety incident on robot-assisted sites in 2026 could delay adoption and contracts.
What makes Blattner Company unique
- Blattner delivered over 80% of Quanta's 2025 solar capacity, showing unmatched EPC scale.
- It repeatedly ranked among Solar Power World's top U.S. solar contractors from 2020-2026.
- Blattner industrializes utility-scale solar with autonomous robots and standardized construction workflows.
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Benefits
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
401(k) Company Match
Paid Vacation
Education Assistance (Tuition Reimbursement)
Gym Membership
Company News
Quanta leads in solar installation capacity. Posted on July 21, 2026 | 2 min. read AVON, Minn., July 21, 2026 - Blattner's parent company, Quanta Services, Inc. (NYSE: PWR), earned the top spot on Solar Power World's 2026 Top Solar Contractors list after installing more than 6,000 MW of solar capacity in 2025. The rankings, published annually by Solar Power World, recognize the leading solar contractors across the United States. Quanta's top ranking reflects its growing impact on the U.S. energy market. In 2025, Blattner delivered more than 80% of Quanta's solar capacity, helping reinforce its position as the most experienced EPC contractor in utility-scale renewable energy construction. Blattner appeared on the Top Solar Contractor list independently as No. 1 in 2020, No. 2 in 2021 and 2022, and as part of Quanta when the company was ranked No. 1 in 2023, No. 4 in 2024 and No. 1 in 2025. Quanta's Press Release, "Quanta Services Named 2026 Top U.S. Solar Solutions Provider by Solar Power World" 2026 Solar Power World Story, "2026 Top Solar Contractors List showcases veterans of dominant energy industry" 2026 Solar Power World Top Solar Contractors List
Fort Worth Court of Appeals affirms TC summary judgment for contractor in third-party liability case. The Fort Worth Court of Appeals has affirmed a trial court order granting summary judgment to a contractor in a worksite injury case in which the plaintiff alleged that the contractor retained control of the subcontractor's work. Jeremy Haggard v. Blattner Energy, Inc. (No. 02-25-00056; February 26, 2026) arose from a 2019 worksite injury at an Iowa windfarm. Plaintiff worked as a rigger, hooking parts to the crane, signaling instructions to the crane operator, and serving as the crane crew's foreman. While standing on top of a wind tower's old nacelle without fall protection, Plaintiff was knocked off when the crane operator "let this load swing out of control." Plaintiff hit the crane's stowage container on his way to the ground, injuring his abdomen. Plaintiff sued four entities, including Blattner, alleging negligence and gross negligence. After the close of discovery, Blattner filed traditional and no-evidence MSJs asserting no duty. The trial court granted summary judgment. Plaintiff appealed. In an opinion by Justice Kerr, the court of appeals affirmed. NextEra Energy, which owned the windfarm, contracted with Blattner for "repowering" and with GE for equipment supply and restarting the turbines. Blattner's job was to provide engineering, procedure, and construction services, which involved isolating the tower from electricity, removing vintage GE components, setting them on the ground, installing and rewiring new GE components, and inspecting and certifying the completion of the work. NextEra would then inspect and issue a certificate of completion, freeing Blattner to move on to the next tower. GE's job was to disassemble and remove used parts that Blattner placed at each tower's base, of which GE reacquired ownership. Blattner and GE hired subcontractors for the work. GE hired C2 logistics, Plaintiff's employer, to disassemble the old nacelles. Blattner thus neither employed Plaintiff nor had a contract with his employer. Blattner argued that it owed Plaintiff no duty. Plaintiff countered that Blattner retained contractual control of the work, creating a duty. Blattner responded that since it didn't have a contract with Plaintiff's employer, Plaintiff couldn't show that Blattner retained such control. Plaintiff didn't dispute that Blattner had no direct relationship with C2 but instead "focus-ed] on the NextEra-Blattner repowering agreement - an agreement that [Plaintiff] did not file but said NextEra would submit for an in camera inspection based on the contract's alleged confidentiality." Plaintiff failed to produce the agreement in his summary judgment evidence, but managed to produce screenshotted excerpts of it purporting to show Blattner's "complete control" of the worksite, together with a screenshot of Blattner's safety manual (which specified fall protection measures). But because Plaintiff didn't attach the agreement and safety manual themselves to his summary-judgment evidence, the court had before only unauthenticated screenshots. Additionally, the court observed "we are being asked to construe the agreement's paragraphs in isolation, including without having the agreement's defined terms - notably "Labor," "Work," and "employees." Plaintiff thus couldn't show that GE and its subs were covered by the repowering agreement in the first place. He also failed to show that Blattner's safety manual covered anyone else besides its own employees. "Based on the record before us," the court concluded, "it is unclear whether it is even corre t to classify Blattner as theor a general contractor of the entire repowering project; the devil is in the contractual details that [Plaintiff] did not produce." What is odd about this case is that nobody seemed to know whether the trial court actually reviewed the repowering agreement, nor did they request that the trial-court clerk include the unfiled agreement in the appellate record. Faced with that uncertainty, the court "must presume that the missing repowering agreement did not raise any fact issues that would have precluded the trial court's granting Blattner's no-evidence summary-judgment motion." Plaintiff would equally have failed in defeating Blattner's traditional MSJ, since nothing he produced "demonstrate that requisite level of control over the operative details of C2's work." He attempted to argue that he raised a fact issue as actual (as opposed to contractual) control. But that would require evidence that Blattner retained "a right of supervision that the independent contractor [C2] is not entirely free to do the work in its own way." As the court stated, "[f]or a duty to arise through exercising actual control over a job worksite - what is essentially a negligent undertaking - an affirmative course of action is required." But even Plaintiff's testimony acknowledged that he didn't see any Blattner people at the worksite until after he was hurt, when they gave him first aid while awaiting the ambulance. Plaintiff also testified that two weeks prior to the accident, Blattner stopped work on his tower because he was unharnessed. The work resumed when C2 told the Blattner safety rep that a harness could't be used because there was nothing to which to attach it. None of this established actual control. It did establish that Plaintiff's employer "controlled the disassembly work at each tower" without interference from Blattner," which was "free to direct C2 on when and where it worked and to set minimal safety standards without becoming C2's insurer for its negligent acts." And, by the way, the testimony of Plaintiff's "safety expert" about OSHA multi-employer directives concerning who is a "controlling entity" have no effect on Texas common law one way or the other. The trial court thus properly granted summary judgment.
Quanta Operating Companies Collaborate to Achieve Solar Industry Top Spot and Historic MilestoneHOUSTON, July 25, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Quanta Services, Inc. (NYSE:PWR) announced today that it has been named the top solar infrastructure solutions provider in the United States by Solar Power World. This achievement was made possible by the collaborative work of three Quanta operating companies: Blattner Company, RP Construction Services (RPCS) and The Ryan Company. The combined expertise and efforts of the three companies installed more than two gigawatts of domestic solar generating capacity in 2022 alone – a new milestone of achievement in Top Solar Contractor history.Duke Austin, Quanta Services' President and Chief Executive Officer said, "Being named Top Solar Contractor is an honor and tells part of the bigger story of how we are working to build a brighter and cleaner energy future for the country. To achieve a reduced-carbon economy, we must actively collaborate to drive the shift toward renewable and sustainable energy solutions."Quanta's renewable energy infrastructure solutions powers modern life, and with its more than 200 operating companies, Quanta is building, modernizing and maintaining energy infrastructure across North America and Australia. Powerhouse renewable energy engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) solutions provider, Blattner Company, was acquired by Quanta in 2021 and during its history has constructed more than 25 percent of the utility-scale renewable energy generating capacity in the United States
Meanwhile, Sarcos has signed an agreement with engineering, procurement, and construction firm Blattner Company to develop and refine its own autonomous mobile robotic system for utility-scale solar construction.
Shoals Technologies Group (Nasdaq: SHLS ) has signed a Master Supply Agreement with Blattner Company to deliver 10 GW of its award-winning Big Lead Assembly (BLA) and systems solutions over the next two years.