Principal Engineer - Security & Controls (Data Centers)

About the role

AECOM is seeking a senior technical leader to design, govern and deliver industrial automation, SCADA, EPMS, PLC/DCS and OT/IT network solutions for mission‑critical data center projects worldwide. The Principal Engineer will own the full system lifecycle, from concept and detailed design through testing, commissioning and operational support.

Key responsibilities

• Act as the technical authority for instrumentation & control and OT systems on critical data‑center projects.
• Lead multidisciplinary design teams, consultants and technology suppliers, establishing engineering standards and reusable frameworks.
• Develop design criteria, cause‑and‑effect matrices, I/O lists, control narratives and oversee FAT/SAT, commissioning and integrated testing.
• Manage resilience, safety and cybersecurity risks, applying ISA/IEC 62443 and NIST 800‑82 principles.
• Define high‑availability architectures, network segmentation, redundancy, fail‑over and disaster‑recovery strategies for SCADA, PLC/DCS and BMS.

Required profile

• Bachelor’s degree in Instrumentation & Control, Automation, Electrical or related engineering discipline.
• Minimum 6 years of experience in industrial automation, SCADA, PLC/DCS and OT/IT systems; 8 years preferred.
• Proven experience designing control system architectures for mission‑critical facilities or data centers (Tier III/IV).
• Advanced English (B2) and strong stakeholder‑management skills.
• Ability to work in international, multidisciplinary project environments.

Required skills

• Industrial automation platforms, SCADA, EPMS, PLC/DCS, OT/IT networking.
• IEC 61131‑3 programming, HMI development, alarm and historian configuration.
• AutoCAD, Revit and industrial automation engineering tools.
• Protocols: Modbus TCP/RTU, OPC UA, BACnet/IP, DNP3, IEC 61850, EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, MQTT, SNMP.
• Network design: Layer 2/3 OT networks, VLANs, QoS, redundancy, NTP/PTP.
• Cybersecurity standards: ISA/IEC 62443, NIST 800‑82, zone‑conduit modeling.