Solid-State Transformer Workforce Pipelines: How NCSU, Virginia Tech, ETH Zurich, and Industry Are Trying to Close the Engineer Shortage

The chronic shortage of trained power-electronics engineers documented in earlier mgrid coverage is the binding constraint on solid-state transformer (SST) industry production ramp through 2028 and 2030. Multiple academic institutions and several industrial training programs are working to expand the pipeline. The combined output of these workforce-development efforts will determine whether the SST industry can fill its hiring requirements or whether the engineer shortage will permanently cap industry expansion.

NCSU FREEDM Systems Center remains the largest single US academic source of power-electronics-trained PhDs with SST-specific dissertation work. FREEDM’s annual graduating PhD cohort numbers approximately 15 to 25 power-electronics PhDs, with the proportion specifically focused on SST architectures ranging from 30 to 60 percent depending on graduate-cohort year and faculty research priorities. The FREEDM industrial-membership model provides direct hiring pipelines to member companies including ABB, Eaton, Hitachi Energy, Schneider Electric, and Siemens.

Virginia Tech CPES graduates a similar volume of power-electronics PhDs with a broader cross-application scope (data center, EV charging, smart grids, consumer electronics). The CPES annual cohort numbers approximately 20 to 30 PhD graduates, with SST-specific dissertations representing approximately 20 to 40 percent. The CPES industrial-membership model has historically anchored stronger relationships with US data-center customers (Microsoft, Meta) and with Tier-1 semiconductor suppliers (Wolfspeed, onsemi, Texas Instruments).

The University of Wisconsin-Madison power-electronics group, the University of Texas-Austin program, the Georgia Institute of Technology Center for Distributed Energy (Deepak Divan’s home institution), the University of Arkansas, and the Colorado School of Mines collectively contribute another 30 to 50 PhD graduates per year. ETH Zurich’s Power Electronic Systems Lab is the largest single European source.

Industrial training programs are also expanding. ABB and Hitachi Energy each operate multi-month internal training programs for newly hired engineers from adjacent specialties (solar inverters, motor drives, traction power). Eaton has expanded its post-Resilient-Power-acquisition technical-staffing programs. The startups (DG Matrix, Amperesand, Heron Power) rely substantially on lateral hires from established manufacturers and from EV-OEM power-electronics teams. The lateral-hiring market has produced significant compensation inflation through 2024 and 2025.

The aggregate workforce question for the 2028-2030 horizon is whether the combined academic and industrial pipeline can produce the approximately 10,000 to 15,000 net additional power-electronics engineers the SST industry needs at full production ramp. The current trajectory suggests a roughly 2,000 to 3,000 engineer annual flow into the segment, which would require six to eight years to reach the cumulative requirement. Whether industry investment in additional academic-program expansion, in international hiring, and in cross-discipline retraining can compress that timeline is the open strategic question.

Why It Matters

For the SST industry’s growth ceiling, whether NCSU FREEDM, Virginia Tech, ETH Zurich, and industrial training programs can expand the power-electronics engineering pipeline will determine if manufacturers fill their hiring needs or stay permanently capped. Workforce output is the constraint that sits behind every capacity announcement, and unlike fabs it cannot be accelerated with a check.

Critical Perspective

Editorial correction: This post is part of MGRID’s Solid-State Transformer industry coverage. As of May 2026, that body of work systematically framed manufacturer announcements, funding rounds, and laboratory demonstrations as commercial deployments. The reality is that field-deployed commercial-class SST in revenue service globally is measured in single digits, and almost every product cited in this series is at “announced” or “funded” stage, not “operational.” Readers should treat the specific claims in this post against the standards documented in our SST Industry Reality Check (the per-claim audit table maps marketing language to verifiable deployment status). The corrective article is the canonical reference for SST industry reality; this post remains published with its original framing so the editorial drift is traceable.

Related Coverage

• FREEDM Systems Center at NCSU: The 2008 NSF Center That Turned Solid-State Transformers Into Real Devices: FREEDM Systems Center at NCSU, a key player in SST development
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• SolarEdge and Infineon Announce Modular 2-5 MW Solid-State Transformer Targeting >99% Efficiency for AI Data Centers: SolarEdge and Infineon target AI data centers with SSTs
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