Section Manager, Engineering (Electrical Design)

Job Posting Start Date:

Job Posting End Date:

Our Electrical Design Engineering team is hiring a Section Manager, Electrical Design Engineering.

In this role, you will lead a team of electrical engineers and technical specialists responsible for designing the changes, upgrades, and replacements that keep our eight nuclear generating units and their high-voltage infrastructure safe, reliable, and modern. You will be the technical and people leader for the team: setting priorities, guiding engineering decisions, overseeing the work of our engineers and external engineering firms, approving key design deliverables, and growing the next generation of engineering leaders.

You do not need to come from the nuclear industry. We are open to strong electrical engineering leaders from utilities, power generation, transmission and distribution, heavy industry, oil and gas, mining, rail, and other highly regulated or safety-critical sectors. What matters most is your engineering depth, your leadership, and your genuine appetite to learn. We will invest in a structured onboarding program to help you understand our plant systems, regulatory environment, and engineering processes.

What will you be responsible for?

Safety, quality and technical leadership

• Set and reinforce high standards for nuclear safety, workplace safety, design quality, and technical rigour.

• Act as the team’s technical conscience: challenge assumptions, ask the hard questions, and make sure engineering decisions are well-founded, documented, independently reviewed, and escalated when needed.

• Provide technical oversight of design work completed by our engineers and by external engineering firms.

• Approve engineering deliverables within your assigned authority once qualified.

Portfolio and project delivery

• Set clear priorities for the team based on safety, plant reliability, and project needs.

• Build resource plans that balance in-house engineers and external engineering firms across a large, varied portfolio.

• Monitor project performance and step in early when scope, schedule, cost, quality, or resourcing risks threaten delivery.

• Ensure designs are mature enough to support purchasing, construction, testing, and handover to plant operations.

People and team leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop your team, with a deliberate focus on building capable technical leads who can make decisions and eventually step into your role.

• Set clear expectations, explain the “why” behind priorities, and hold yourself and the team accountable for commitments and behaviours.

• Ensure team members hold the training, qualifications, and authorizations required for their work.

• Lead recruitment, onboarding, performance management, development planning, and succession planning.

Cross-functional and supplier leadership

• Build strong working relationships with project management, construction, operations, maintenance, procurement, and external suppliers.

• Set clear expectations for engineering firms and hold them to standards for quality, schedule, cost, and responsiveness.

• Resolve competing priorities across groups and raise constraints early so they can be solved, not just reported.

Business and performance management

• Manage the team’s budget, forecasts, workload, and resource utilization.

• Track team performance, own the results, and drive corrective action when results fall short.

• Communicate performance, risks, priorities, and recovery plans clearly to senior leadership.

Specific Responsibilities:

Electrical portfolio you will lead

• Lead the planning, prioritization, and delivery of a large and technically diverse electrical design portfolio, currently about 39 active projects and assignments with an engineering budget of approximately $177 million. The work spans major capital projects, planned-outage work, asset renewal, and day-to-day engineering support to the operating plant.

• Provide engineering leadership for major modernization and reliability work across both generating stations, including:

• Protective relaying replacements

• Generator excitation system and excitation transformer replacements

• Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) inverter and DC power converter replacements

• Station service transformer, motor control centre, and power distribution upgrades

• 500 kV switchyard work, including gas-insulated switchgear (GIS), disconnect switches, DC supply systems, and interfaces with the provincial transmission operator

• Emergency engineering support and other electrical reliability improvements

• Lead engineering through the full project lifecycle, from early concept and definition through detailed design, construction, testing, closeout, and handover to plant operations.

Technical governance

• Ensure engineering work meets regulatory requirements, applicable codes and standards (such as CSA and IEEE), and our design control and change management processes.

• Review and approve key engineering deliverables, including design requirements, technical specifications, engineering calculations, testing and commissioning specifications, design change packages, and engineering cost and schedule estimates.

• Identify gaps in design maturity early and manage technical risk proactively, before it reaches procurement, construction, or the plant.

Developing people and leaders

• Coach engineers through real technical problems rather than solving problems for them, building judgement and confidence across the team.

• Delegate decision-making to technical leads with clear intent, defined authority, and your backing.

• Use lessons learned and post-project reviews to improve how the team plans and executes, without blame.

• Maintain succession plans and technical proficiency so the team performs well whether or not you are in the room.

Performance, stakeholders and suppliers

• Monitor and act on team performance measures such as schedule and commitment adherence, design change quality, and completion of engineering requests.

• Lead team performance reviews and continuous improvement activities.

• Represent the team in management reviews and project decision forums, and provide clear direction and oversight to external engineering firms.

The leader we are looking for

Technical skill gets you considered for this role. How you lead decides whether you succeed in it. We are looking for someone who consistently shows:

• Drive: You set a high standard, make things happen, and hold the line on that standard, knowing a team’s real standard is what its leader is willing to accept.

• Integrity: You tell the truth, including bad news, with tact. You do what you say, and you speak up and respectfully push back when safety, quality, or the objective is at risk.

• Resilience: You stay calm under pressure, set priorities, and act on the most important problem first. You can make sound decisions with incomplete information and adjust as new facts emerge.

• Technical curiosity: You want to understand how things really work, from first principles. You ask “why” until you understand, and you encourage your team to do the same.

• Ownership without blame: When something goes wrong, you look first at what you could have done differently, fix the problem, and give credit for success to your team.

• Humility and openness: You check your ego, welcome challenge from anyone regardless of title, and admit when you are wrong.

• Clear, simple communication: You explain the purpose behind the work so plainly that the newest engineer on the team understands it and can act on it.

• Empowerment: You build trust, give your leads real decision-making authority, and back them up. Your aim is to develop leaders who could one day replace you.

• Teamwork across boundaries: You break down “us versus them” thinking and build relationships that help engineering, projects, operations, and suppliers succeed together.

• Leading up as well as down: You keep your leaders informed, give them what they need to make decisions, and fully commit to decisions once they are made.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Strong knowledge of electrical power systems, such as power distribution, protection and control, high-voltage switchyards, transformers, generator excitation, UPS and DC systems, and their interfaces with digital control systems.

• Proven engineering judgement: the ability to assess technical risk, challenge assumptions, spot gaps in design maturity, and make sound decisions.

• Experience working under formal design control, configuration management, or management of change processes in a regulated or safety-critical environment.

• Learning agility, with a demonstrated ability to come up to speed quickly on new systems, regulations, and industry standards.

• Ability to balance safety, quality, schedule, and cost while managing many priorities and stakeholders at once.

• Experience with troubleshooting, equipment reliability improvement, and root-cause analysis.

• Strong planning, prioritization, and organizational skills.

• Clear written, verbal, and presentation skills, from the engineering floor to senior leadership.

• Leadership skills including coaching, delegation, building accountability, giving candid feedback, and developing high-performing teams.

Education and Experience

Required

• A four-year degree from a recognized university in Electrical Engineering or a related engineering discipline.

• Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) licence in Ontario, or eligibility to obtain one.

• Progressive engineering experience in electrical power systems, including technical decision-making authority.

• Demonstrated experience leading engineers or technical professionals, including coaching, developing talent, and managing performance.

• Experience leading complex engineering projects or programs with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities.

Assets (not required)

• Experience in nuclear power or another highly regulated industry such as utilities, transmission, oil and gas, chemical, rail, or aerospace.

• Experience managing engineering consultants, contractors, or external design firms.

• Experience with capital project delivery, asset management, equipment reliability, or engineering change programs.

• Experience in power plant electrical systems or high-voltage substations.

Don’t meet every point?  If this role excites you and your experience is a strong but not perfect fit, we encourage you to apply.

• Meaningful work: Your designs will help provide clean, reliable electricity to Ontario and support the production of life-saving medical isotopes.

• Large-scale technical challenge: Lead engineering on a modernization portfolio few organizations in Canada can match.

• Investment in you: Structured onboarding into nuclear systems and processes, plus ongoing leadership and technical development.

• Stability and growth: A long-term business with clear paths into senior engineering and leadership roles.

Are you ready for a change?

Please complete the online application and attach a cover letter and resume, indicating your education and experience as it relates to this opportunity. We look forward to receiving your application and will be in contact with you, should you be selected for an interview. 

The successful candidate will be selected based on related and required education, experience, knowledge and skills, a competency-based interview, and background reference checks.