The energy industry may be more exciting to work in now than at any other time in recent memory, but it’s still difficult for energy companies large and small to compete against the likes of Google and Apple to recruit top talent.
One cleantech startup, Lumin, which offers smart home controls via the circuit breaker, has found a way to entice a lead data engineer to its team with its recent hire of Brian Sullivan as head of data engineering. Sullivan spent more than six years at Netflix as director of the streaming data engineering team. He is a fan of Bob’s Burgers, according to his LinkedIn profile.
In more traditional power news, General Electric announced it will reorganize GE Power into two businesses, one for gas power systems and power services and GE Power Portfolio, which will be for the steam, nuclear, grid and power conversion businesses. Earlier in the month, GE closed a deal to transfer its distributed gas power business to equity investor Advent International. The new company, encompassing GE’s Jenbacher and Waukesha gas engine brands, also has a new name: Innio. The products will still retain their brand names. Read more about the spinoff here.
As part of the power restructuring, retired GE vice chairman John Rice will return to the company as chairman of GE's gas power business. Scott Strazik, current president of Power Services, will now be CEO of GE's gas power business. Russell Stokes, current CEO of GE Power, will be named the CEO of GE Power Portfolio. It is unknown whether any of these three gentlemen are fans of Bob’s Burgers.
Duke Energy has promoted two executives. Stan Pinegar has moved from Duke Energy’s VP of Indiana government affairs to become Duke Energy’s state president in Indiana. He is replacing Melody Birmingham-Byrd, who will become Duke Energy's SVP and chief procurement officer. She is replacing Swati Daji, who became Duke Energy's SVP of customer solutions earlier this month.
Michigan’s largest energy provider, Consumers Energy, has promoted Tonya Berry from executive director of quality within the company, to VP of operations performance. Berry will lead implementation of the customer-centric lean methodologies across the gas and electric groups.
In other power news, Utilidata, which delivers energy optimization from substation to the grid edge, has hired Marissa Hummon as CTO. She was most recently director of product at Tendril.
And since we can’t get through a jobs column without some Tesla executive moves, CNBC is reporting that Tesla’s head of global security, Jeff Jones, has been dismissed after less than a year.
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Quantal, an executive search firm focused on building specialized teams in connected industry, is the sponsor of the GTM jobs column.
Among its many active searches, Quantal has been engaged to find an IT infrastructure manager for a utility.
The client is an exciting utility co-op. They are one of the largest in the area, and with a new senior leadership team from the CEO on down, they are extremely progressive, and working on a large-scale technology integration. Currently they are looking for a talented Enterprise Architect to join the team and own this function for the company and make an immediate impact. Someone with utility experience who has worked with enterprise software, including operational through AMI, would be the best fit. They have a very solid structure, plan and leadership team in place and offer competitive salaries, benefits, vacation and full relocation.
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Spruce Finance, which exited the residential efficiency and solar lending and property-assessed clean energy origination business earlier his year, has been acquired by HPS Investment Partners. Spruce’s co-chairman of the board, Christian Fong, is now president and CEO.
NextEnergy has brought on a variety of executives. Tim Slusser is in the new position of director of smart mobility initiatives. He comes from Michigan Economic Development Corporation where he was business strategy manager. Nathalie Osborn is now director of smart grid initiatives. She was previously with CLEAResult. David Jackson is NextEnergy’s new director of business development and industry partnerships and has previously been with Siemens, Schneider Electric and DTE Energy.
Michael Hopkins is now CEO of, well, a startup still in stealth mode. He spent nearly the last decade leading thermal storage startup Ice Energy, which raised $40 million earlier this year.
Walburga Hemetsberger is now CEO of the European solar energy association, SolarPower Europe, according to PV Magazine. In the past decade she has been head of the EU Representation Office of Austrian energy company Verbund AG, as well as a board member of Hydrogen Europe in charge of energy transition solutions.
Cody Norman is now director of global applications engineering at Array Technologies. He was previously with REC Solar, RGS Energy and SnapNrack.
DNV GL has hired Dana Olson as the new global solar segment leader. He was previously technology manager at the U.S. Department of Energy working on SunShot and was at NREL before that.