DES Engineering Manager

Company Overview:

MN8 Energy is one of the largest independent solar energy and energy storage owner-operators in the U.S., serving enterprise customers with clean energy and complementary solutions, such as battery storage and EV Charging, to enable an electrified, decarbonized world. Originally founded inside of Goldman Sachs in 2017, our fleet has grown to nearly 4-gigawatts of solar, including 875 projects across 28 states, and over 270 megawatts of battery storage projects, with each project tailored to achieve the bold decarbonization targets and goals of our more than 200 blue-chip customers. MN8 is headquartered in New York with offices in Texas, Florida and Madrid.

Position Overview:

The Distributed Energy Solutions (DES) Engineer provides technical leadership for the development, construction, commissioning, and operation of emerging energy-infrastructure projects. The role currently supports three priority solution areas: large fleet EV charging, high-reliability charging for autonomous-vehicle fleets, and technical due diligence for modular data-center opportunities, including brownfield opportunities within MN8's existing asset fleet.

This is a platform- and project-focused engineering role, not a position dedicated to a single customer account. The engineer works across Development, Origination, Engineering, Procurement, Construction, Asset Management, Operations, IT/cybersecurity, utilities, customers, and external engineers to convert early concepts into safe, permitted, constructible, operable, and scalable systems.

As the Manager, DES Engineer, you will:

Technical development and due diligence

• Lead technical feasibility assessments from opportunity screening through investment decision, identifying fatal flaws, key assumptions, design basis, schedule drivers, cost and performance risks, and required follow-up studies.

• Develop conceptual site layouts, load profiles, single-line concepts, equipment sizing, utility-service strategies, and owner technical requirements sufficient to support site selection, budgeting, commercial evaluation, and consultant handoff.

• Coordinate utility capacity inquiries, new-service or interconnection applications, rate and tariff inputs, service-voltage selection, required system upgrades, and energization schedules.

• Create and maintain repeatable screening tools, design standards, technical specifications, scopes of work, review checklists, and lessons learned across the DES portfolio.

• Translate customer and operating requirements into clear hardware, controls, communications, cybersecurity, reliability, maintainability, and acceptance criteria.

Large fleet EV charging

• Evaluate depot and en-route charging concepts using vehicle duty cycles, dwell windows, route schedules, charger utilization, charging curves, fleet-growth assumptions, resilience requirements, and available utility capacity.

• Develop or review charger mix, electrical distribution, transformers, switchgear, protective devices, cable routing, parking and vehicle circulation, lighting, signage, accessibility, fire/life-safety provisions, and future expansion allowances.

• Assess managed charging, charge-management systems, energy management, solar and storage integration, demand-charge mitigation, backup power, and operational fallback strategies.

Autonomous-vehicle charging

• Develop high-throughput, high-availability charging concepts for large autonomous-mobility providers, including redundancy, fault isolation, remote recovery, maintenance access, and phased capacity growth.

• Coordinate vehicle movements and safe site circulation with charging interfaces, automated or robotic charging equipment where applicable, communications networks, controls, and remote operations platforms.

• Define and verify system-level availability, fail-safe behavior, alarm and event handling, data interfaces, cybersecurity responsibilities, commissioning scenarios, and operational acceptance tests.

Modular data-center due diligence

• Screen existing MN8 assets and other brownfield sites for modular data-center potential, considering usable electrical capacity, interconnection and substation constraints, parcel control, setbacks, access, fiber, water and cooling options, environmental conditions, permitting, noise, security, and construction logistics.

• Develop preliminary power-balance and capacity-expansion concepts, including service topology, redundancy, transformers, switchgear, UPS and backup-generation interfaces, grounding, protection, controls, and coordination with existing renewable or storage assets.

• Review modular data-center vendors and concepts for electrical and cooling architecture, module transport and installation, fire/life safety, maintainability, expandability, commissioning, performance guarantees, and alignment with customer uptime requirements.

• Prepare technical diligence findings, risk registers, data gaps, ROM assumptions, and recommendations that enable Development and investment teams to compare and prioritize opportunities.

Design, construction, commissioning, and operations

• Manage owner engineers, engineers of record, OEMs, integrators, contractors, and specialist consultants; establish design responsibility and confirm that interfaces are owned and coordinated.

• Review design packages, calculations, studies, equipment selections, drawings, submittals, RFIs, deviations, and value-engineering proposals for compliance with the design basis, codes, contracts, operability, and lifecycle objectives.

• Support procurement of long-lead equipment through technical bid evaluations, approved-vendor recommendations, factory testing requirements, and resolution of technical exceptions.

• Provide field engineering support during construction, energization, startup, commissioning, and turnover; participate in site walks, factory/site acceptance testing, punch-list closure, and readiness reviews.

• Coordinate integration of charging platforms, energy-management systems, SCADA or monitoring, metering, networking, APIs, data historians, alarms, and maintenance systems. The role is not expected to be a software developer but must define and verify system interfaces and acceptance criteria.

• Support Asset Management and Operations with onboarding, operating procedures, maintenance strategies, spare-parts recommendations, warranty administration, performance monitoring, root-cause investigations, and corrective-action plans.

• Promote safe engineering and field practices and verify compliance with applicable electrical, building, fire, accessibility, occupational-safety, utility, and local jurisdictional requirements.

Our ideal candidate will have:

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical, Civil or Mechanical Engineering or a closely related engineering discipline.

• 3+ years of relevant experience in distributed energy, EV charging, data centers, utility infrastructure, industrial facilities, microgrids, renewable energy, or similarly complex electrical infrastructure.

• Demonstrated experience in at least one of the role's three focus areas, with the technical breadth and curiosity to evaluate adjacent technologies. Deep prior experience in all three areas is not required.

• Working knowledge of low- and medium-voltage distribution, transformers, switchgear, protection and controls, grounding, metering, load calculations, and single-line diagrams.

• Experience coordinating with electric utilities, authorities having jurisdiction, owner engineers, engineers of record, OEMs, contractors, and project stakeholders.

• Experience reviewing multidisciplinary designs and supporting projects through construction, commissioning, or operations.

• Ability to analyze incomplete information, make transparent assumptions, identify material risks, and communicate a practical recommendation to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Strong written, verbal, organizational, and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to manage multiple projects and priorities.

• Ability to travel to project, vendor, and operating sites within the United States, typically up to 25%.

How we set you up for success:

At MN8, we know our most valuable resource is our people. That’s why we offer the following benefits. By investing in you, we know we are investing in the clean energy of tomorrow.

• Medical/Dental/Vision Insurance beginning the 1st of the month following your date of hire

• Paid Time Off

• Paid holidays and floating holidays

• 401(k) with competitive employer match

• Parental leave

MN8 Energy is an Equal Opportunity Employer and fully subscribes to the principles of Equal Employment Opportunity to ensure that all applicants and employees are considered for hire, promotion, and job status without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, marital or familial status.

Recruitment Fraud Alert

MN8 Energy will never conduct interviews via text message or instant messaging platforms. All interviews are scheduled through official company channels. If you receive suspicious outreach claiming to be from MN8, please verify the source before responding. For questions or concerns, contact our HR team at [email protected].