Director, Project Engineering
AspenTech · Reading · $170,000–$212,500 (stated in the posting)
The driving force behind our success has always been the people of AspenTech. What drives us, is our aspiration, our desire and ambition to keep pushing the envelope, overcoming any hurdle, challenging the status quo to continually find a better way. You will experience these qualities of passion, pride and aspiration in many ways — from a rich set of career development programs to support of community service projects to social events that foster fun and relationship building across our global community.
The Role
The Director of Project Engineering – Europe is responsible for leading the Project Engineering organization across the European region, ensuring the successful delivery of complex SCADA, Energy Management Systems (EMS), Generation Management Systems (GMS), Advance Distribution Management Systems (ADMS), and related Operational Technology (OT) solutions for electric utility customers.Based in Europe, the Director will provide strategic leadership for a geographically dispersed team of Project Engineers supporting Professional Services delivery. This leader will establish engineering best practices, develop organizational capability, optimize resource utilization, and ensure consistent execution across multiple customer programs while maintaining the highest standards of quality, safety, cybersecurity, and customer satisfaction.
The Director partners closely with the large Professional Services leaders, Project Management, Sales, Product Management, Customer Support, and Executive Leadership to drive operational excellence, continuous improvement, and long-term business growth throughout the region.
Your Impact
Organizational Leadership
- Lead, develop, and inspire a high-performing regional team of Project Engineering Managers, Senior Project Engineers, and Project Engineers.
- Establish the strategic vision, organizational structure, and operating model for Project Engineering across Europe.
- Build organizational capability through recruiting, coaching, mentoring, succession planning, and career development.
- Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, innovation, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.
- Develop engineering leadership within the organization by mentoring future technical and people leaders.
- Promote employee engagement and retention through effective leadership and talent development.
Project Delivery Leadership
- Provide executive oversight for the engineering delivery of complex utility automation, SCADA, EMS, GMS, DMS, OMS, and Fluid/Gas projects.
- Ensure projects are delivered safely, on schedule, within budget, and in accordance with customer requirements and quality standards.
- Establish engineering governance, delivery methodologies, design standards, and technical review processes.
- Drive consistency in engineering execution across multiple countries and project teams.
- Provide executive support for critical customer escalations and complex technical challenges.
- Monitor engineering performance through key operational metrics and implement corrective actions where necessary.
Engineering Excellence
- Establish and maintain engineering standards, processes, templates, and best practices across the regional organization.
- Ensure consistent execution of:
- System architecture and design
- Hardware and software integration
- Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT)
- Site Acceptance Testing (SAT)
- Commissioning
- Cybersecurity and networking standards
- Documentation quality
- Champion continuous improvement initiatives that improve quality, efficiency, scalability, and customer outcomes.
- Encourage adoption of new technologies, engineering tools, automation, and digital delivery practices.
Resource & Operational Management
- Develop regional engineering capacity plans aligned with business growth.
- Oversee engineering resource planning across multiple concurrent projects.
- Balance utilization, technical capability, and customer priorities across the engineering organization.
- Collaborate with Professional Services leadership to forecast staffing requirements and hiring plans.
- Manage departmental budgets and support operational planning.
- Identify delivery risks and implement mitigation strategies.
Customer & Business Leadership
- Build trusted executive relationships with utility customers across Europe.
- Participate in executive customer meetings, project steering committees, and strategic reviews.
- Partner with Sales and Business Development during pursuit activities by providing engineering leadership, technical strategy, and delivery confidence.
- Support proposal development, solution reviews, project estimation, and risk assessments.
- Act as an executive sponsor for strategic customer engagements when required.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Collaborate with Product Management to influence product roadmap based on customer and delivery feedback.
- Partner with Global Engineering and Product Development to standardize engineering methodologies.
- Work closely with Project Management to improve project execution and customer satisfaction.
- Coordinate with Customer Support to ensure successful transition from project implementation to operational support.
Governance & Compliance
- Ensure compliance with company quality standards, cybersecurity requirements, health and safety regulations, and applicable industry standards.
- Promote adherence to utility industry standards, engineering best practices, and regulatory requirements throughout the project lifecycle.
- Establish engineering performance dashboards and regularly report regional performance to executive leadership.
What You'll Need
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or a related engineering discipline.
- Master's degree in Engineering, Business Administration (MBA), or related discipline preferred.
Experience
- 10+ years of progressive engineering experience within industrial automation, SCADA, energy management, or mission-critical control systems.
- 5+ years of engineering leadership experience managing managers and technical teams.
- Demonstrated success leading geographically distributed engineering organizations.
- Significant experience delivering complex utility SCADA, EMS, DMS, ADMS, or related Operational Technology solutions.
- Experience supporting electric transmission, distribution, generation, or renewable energy customers.
- Proven experience leading engineering organizations through growth and organizational change.
- Experience managing engineering resources across multiple concurrent customer projects.
- Experience working within matrix organizations and collaborating across international teams.
- Experience supporting technical sales, proposals, and customer executive engagements.
Technical Qualifications
Strong understanding of:
- Utility SCADA architectures
- Energy Management Systems (EMS)
- Distribution Management Systems (DMS)
- Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS)
- Real-time control systems
- Industrial networking and communications
- High-availability system architectures
- Client/server and distributed computing environments
- Cybersecurity principles for Operational Technology (OT)
- Cloud and hybrid deployment models (preferred)
Experience with technologies including:
- Windows and Linux operating systems
- Network design and communications
- Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL or similar databases
- JSON, XML, REST APIs
- Virtualization technologies
- Utility communication protocols including:
- ICCP
- DNP3
- IEC 60870-5
- IEC 61850
- Modbus
- MultiSpeak
Leadership Competencies
The successful candidate will demonstrate:
- Strategic thinking with the ability to align engineering execution to business objectives.
- Executive presence with strong communication and influencing skills.
- Proven ability to lead leaders and build high-performing technical organizations.
- Strong commercial awareness and understanding of project financial performance.
- Excellent organizational and prioritization skills.
- Exceptional stakeholder management across customers, executives, and cross-functional teams.
- Strong coaching and mentoring capabilities.
- Sound decision-making under pressure.
- Conflict resolution and negotiation skills.
- Ability to balance customer satisfaction with business objectives.
- Passion for operational excellence and continuous improvement.
- Commitment to fostering an inclusive, collaborative, and high-performance culture.
Travel
- Ability and willingness to travel throughout Europe and occasionally internationally (approximately 25–40%) to support customers, project teams, and company initiatives.