A municipal power company's technical leader faced a six-month deadline to design and build the first prototype for a demonstration project combining distributed solar, storage, flexible DC and intelligent dispatch. Its three existing teams worked separately on distribution automation, power quality and metering. None could deliver the whole programme alone.
The immediate question was whether to assemble a temporary team or recruit a new one. A more useful starting point was the team's structure: who would decide the technical direction, who would own each discipline and who would connect the work to production and grid operations?
Establish the technical direction first
Power engineering cannot simply copy an internet company's two-week release cycle. Grid, equipment and personal safety require formal reviews, adequate safety margins and controlled decisions. These are part of delivery, not incidental administration.
Examples include China Southern Power Grid Power Technology's 2026 action plan, including preparation for the 15th Five-Year Plan, mapping foundational R&D technologies and coordinating resources. The practical implication for a project team is to define its technical puRPOse before filling its headcount.
The first appointment is the project technical lead. This differs from a project manager whose main responsibilities are schedule, budget and coordination. The technical lead must own choices across disciplines: string or central inverters; storage sized for time-of-use arbitrage or frequency regulation; two-level or three-level DC converter topology; conventional optimisation or AI-assisted prediction for dispatch.
The candidate needs system-level engineering judgement, the ability to coordinate electrical, power-electronics, communications, software and mechanical specialists, and the willingness to decide under incomplete information. A technically weak initial choice is difficult to repair simply by hiring more engineers.
Give each essential discipline an owner
A typical project may span power-system analysis and design, power conversion, battery management and storage, communications and dispatch automation, software and AI, and structural and thermal engineering. Each necessary area needs an accountable specialist who can calculate, design, document and work with suppliers.
Zhejiang's provincial power company established its first 14 innovation teams in 2009 after an application and review process. The pattern was a technical leader, experienced discipline specialists and younger staff responsible for execution.
For a new project, a practical initial structure is one technical lead, three to five discipline leads according to scope, and an execution team that expands with the work. The exact number should reflect which of the technical areas are genuinely separate on that project. Existing expert registers, innovation teams and previous project leaders are useful places to start the search.
Assign responsibility for organisational interfaces
A design can be technically sound and still stall. Production may be unable to manufacture it, dispatch may reject connection parameters, or safety reviewers may require additional safeguards. R&D, Manufacturing, dispatch, safety and procurement need a defined way to resolve such differences.
The technical lead can coordinate these interfaces, or a separate project coordinator can do so. The person needs to know the processes, decision points and responsible people, and should engage before formal design review, manufacturing handover, connection applications and safety approval.
Examples include Shanghai's power company using cross-company, cross-department and multidisciplinary service teams. State Grid training figures show a 28% improvement in collaboration efficiency, with 83% of participants saying that responses to cross-department requests became faster. The practical lesson is to invest in coordination capability alongside Technical Recruitment.
Combine three staffing routes
Internal assignments offer speed and familiarity with the business. Their limitation is the possibility of technical gaps requiring additional learning. China Southern Power Grid has built an approximately 1,000-person AI and digital-grid R&D team with capabilities from computing infrastructure to applications. A single project need not reproduce that scale: it can identify promising existing staff and give them defined project responsibilities.
Secondments can fill urgent gaps through related companies, research institutes or equipment suppliers. Examples include the China Electric Power Research Institute, provincial institutes, NARI, XJ and Guodian Nanjing Automation. Seconded specialists need clear technical responsibilities and appropriate decision rights; treating them as occasional outside help weakens their contribution and commitment.
External recruitment is appropriate where neither route supplies the expertise and the capability will matter over the longer term. It is often too slow to be the only answer to an urgent launch. A typical requisition-to-offer process takes two to three months.
A practical first-month sequence
In week one, define the technical objectives and deliverables, appoint one technical lead and develop an initial technical route and staffing structure.
In week two, confirm three to five core disciplines, identify an owner for each and clarify responsibilities and reporting relationships.
In week three, agree coordination arrangements and named contacts across R&D, production, dispatch and safety. Hold a launch meeting so that all parties understand the objectives and schedule.
From week four, add engineers, technicians and testing staff according to actual project needs, with weekly coordination and technical reviews. This sequence is an initial planning framework, not a promise that every project can obtain all required people within a month.
Waiting until every vacancy is filled delays work unnecessarily. Searching for a single engineer who masters power systems, power electronics, communications, software and AI creates another bottleneck. Specialist ownership, integrated by a credible technical lead, is usually more realistic.
UB hunter can help define the lead and core-specialist profiles and assess the mix of internal assignments, secondments and external hiring. The appropriate service scope depends on the project and agreed contract.