Power Platform & Automation Engineer

Idaho National Laboratory is hiring a Power Platform & Automation Engineer to work in HR's Product Experience & Insights team which is part of HR Operations.

At Idaho National Laboratory, you will play a critical role in empowering the HR professionals who recruit, develop, and support the world-class researchers and scientists driving the nation's nuclear energy and national security missions. By ensuring HR teams have modern tools, streamlined processes, and intelligent systems, your work directly enables Idaho National Laboratory to attract and retain the talent that makes its mission possible. As a member of the HR Product Experience & Insights team, you'll meet directly with HR teams to understand how work actually happens, then design and build the PowerApps, Power Automate workflows, Power BI dashboards, and AI-powered solutions that make their hardest problems disappear. You'll evaluate whether automation or a new system is the right fix, and own solutions end to end from first conversation through delivery and ongoing support.

As part of INL's HR Product Experience & Insights team, you'll directly meet with HR teams to understand how they work and what they need. Then, pairing AI engineering with the Microsoft Power Platform, you'll build the apps, automations, and dashboards that make their hardest processes and problems dissolve. You'll change customers' worlds, turning "this is how we've always done it" into "I can't believe we used to do it that way." Yet not every fix is something you build, as sometimes the right solution is a new system that needs to be acquired, and you're just as comfortable running that to ground.

The HR Product Experience & Insights (PEI) team is forged to refine how HR operates. PEI works like an internal digital creative agency, built around a single ethos: are we making it easier to be an employee, a manager, and an HR professional at INL, and can we prove it? PEI consolidates five disciplines: Systems Strategy, Business Analysis, Automation Engineering, UX Research & Design, and Data Analytics. You're joining a small group wearing multiple hats, closer to a team of superheroes than a five-department org chart. The Power Platform & Automation Engineer roles provides PEI's build engine, translating the team's discovery work into delivered application and automation products.

You observe teams closely to discover how work actually happens. The nitty-gritty details of work often remain unknown or misunderstood, yet these details can be what matters most. You'll document customer needs via wireframes, diagrams, or user stories, whatever facilitates rapid understanding. From there, you iterate through tangible drafts and honest feedback, with an eye on minimum viable product, to work agilely rather than waterfall and beholden to a completely nailed down requirements set. The same requirement elicitor remains present through delivery, checking in throughout the short cycles instead of disappearing and reappearing at the end. Skip these methods, and we risk automating a bad process, which is the same bad process, just faster.

Here's your superpower: you're not a one-trick automation pony. You understand the business well enough to know that not every need is automation. Sometimes the right fix is a workflow. Sometimes it's recognizing that a new HR system is the real answer, and when that's the case, you're all over it: vetting the options, meeting with internal HR teams to gather requirements, working directly with vendors, and staying engaged through implementation, so the actual underlying problem gets solved.

This role owns solution delivery, with the Microsoft Power Platform as the default toolset: PowerApps, Power Automate, and Power BI. But the platform serves the solution, not the other way around. When the problem calls for a Python web app in Django or Flask, a .NET service, or even the discovery of an appropriate 3rd party solution, you'll help there too (sometimes teaming up with IT devs). Layered on top is real AI engineering: Python, generative AI, prompt engineering, and agentic automation through tools like Microsoft Copilot Studio, Claude, and other custom platforms as the work demands.

We are hiring for this role because demand for continual optimization and systems replacement across HR is real and only growing. None of this is order-taking: success means the people you serve end up more efficiently, produce higher-quality work, and genuinely enjoy their jobs more, not just that a ticket got closed.

Essential Job Functions & Responsibilities:

Discovery & Business Analysis

• Meet face-to-face and observe how work actually happens, not just how it gets described. What people say they do and what they actually do are often different, and the nitty-gritty details left out are often the insights that matters most.
• Elicit and document requirements through interviews and working sessions, translating what a team asks for into what they actually need. "Documented" might mean a wireframe, a diagram, or a user story, whatever is clear enough to execute on without having to rely on tribal knowledge.
• Wireframe and prototype early and throughout using tools like Lucid or Figma for process maps, wireframes, and data modeling when it helps, so stakeholders are reacting to something tangible within days, not approving a written spec weeks before anything visible exists.
• Catch a bad process before automating it as automating a bad process doesn't solve anything.
• Stay with the customer through delivery, checking in on working builds at short, regular intervals, refining requirements as understanding deepens rather than locking them in at kickoff and signing off.
• Understand full workstreams, not just isolated requests, and proactively surface opportunities to streamline them, increasing efficiency, quality, and job satisfaction for the people doing the work every day.
• Vet whether automation or a new system is the right fix, and when it's the latter, meet with internal HR teams to gather requirements, work directly with vendors, and stay engaged through implementation so the actual underlying problem gets solved.
• Work with process owners across HR (CHRO, Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, Employee Success, Compensation, Benefits, and more) to plan and sequence solutions against real backlogs, not hypothetical requests.
• Collaborate closely with PEI's other disciplines: Systems Strategy, UX Research & Design, and Data Analytics so nothing you build recreates the silos PEI exists to remove.

Build & Engineering

• Design and build PowerApps, including apps embedded in SharePoint sites that give HR teams and employees intuitive products rather than inefficient processes.
• Develop automated workflows and RPA solutions in Power Automate that remove manual, repetitive, and low-resiliency-to-error steps from HR operations.
• Build Power BI dashboards and reports that surface the metrics that matter to a given audience, from an HR specialist to the CHRO, Senior Leadership Team, and Lab Director.
• Apply AI and agentic automation, combining Python, generative AI, and prompt engineering with tools like Microsoft Copilot Studio, custom GPTs, Claude, and Power Automate to design intelligent, self-serve solutions, not just static workflows.
• Reach beyond the Power Platform when the problem calls for it, building custom solutions in Python frameworks (Django, Flask), .NET, or other languages and platforms when a low-code approach isn't the right tool for the job.
• Partner with the team's UX designer to ensure what you build isn't just functional, but the entire experience is modern, consistent, polished, and genuinely pleasant to use.
• Maintain critical documentation for what you build, so solutions remain supportable and owned by PEI rather than any one person.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Level 2-Bachelor's Degree and 2 years of experience building production solutions on the Microsoft Power Platform (PowerApps, Power Automate, Power BI), or equivalent low-code/full-stack development experience OR a HS diploma and 8 years of experience building production solutions on the Microsoft Power Platform (PowerApps, Power Automate, Power BI), or equivalent low-code/full-stack development experience.
• Level 3-Bachelor's Degree and 5 years of experience building production solutions on the Microsoft Power Platform (PowerApps, Power Automate, Power BI), or equivalent low-code/full-stack development experience or a Masters Degree and 2 years of experience OR a HS diploma and 11 years of experience building production solutions on the Microsoft Power Platform (PowerApps, Power Automate, Power BI), or equivalent low-code/full-stack development experience.
• Genuinely personable and energized by working one-on-one with people, not just eager to get to the keyboard.
• Experience building on the Microsoft Power Platform (PowerApps, Power Automate, or Power BI), through professional work, internships, or substantial personal/academic projects.
• Basic exposure to DAX for building simple measures or calculated fields in Power BI, with a willingness to go deeper.
• Foundational Python skills, with the ability to grow into using Python alongside low-code tools rather than instead of them.
• Exposure to or strong interest in generative AI and prompt engineering; formal production experience not required, but curiosity and self-directed learning are.
• Basic SQL proficiency for querying and understanding relational data.
• Demonstrated ability to gather requirements from a stakeholder, document them clearly, and translate them into a working solution, even at small scale.
• A collaborative, ask-good-questions-first instinct, and comfort saying, "I don't know yet, but I'll find out."

The Ideal Candidate Will Also Bring

• A genuine innovator's mindset: you don't stop at solving the problem in front of you, you look at the surrounding workstream and ask what else could be streamlined.
• A builder's mindset: you'd rather prototype something in an afternoon and iterate than spend a week in requirements documents.
• Enterprise development experience outside the Power Platform, such as Python web frameworks (Django, Flask), .NET, or other languages and platforms, for the times a custom-built solution is genuinely the better answer. Not required, but a strong plus.
• Experience with HR systems data or platforms (HRIS, ATS, case management); familiarity with Oracle HCM, Oracle Recruiting Cloud, JobVite, Qualtrics, etc.
• Experience working side-by-side UX Designers, Business Analysts, and Data Analysts.
• Experience with SharePoint site development and administration.
• Familiarity with Power Query (M language) for data transformation within Power BI.
• Experience with Lucid (Lucidchart, Lucidspark) or Figma for process mapping, wireframing, or data modeling.
• Comfort owning your domain in a small, high-impact team where individual accountability is high and cross-functional collaboration is constant.
• The instinct to anticipate future needs and questions, not just the one in front of you.
• May be required to obtain and maintain a security clearance depending on assignment.

Job Information:

The pay range for this position is: Level 2-Salary Grade 430 ($66,504- $136,356)/ Level 3-Salary Grade 440 ($79,344- $162,732). At Idaho National Laboratory compensation decisions are determined using factors such as education, relevant experience, and other credentials.

• Multi-Level: This is a multi-level posting and you will be placed at the appropriate level dependent on depth and breadth of proven experience and skills.

Physical Requirements

While performing the duties of this classification, the employee is frequently required to stand, walk, sit, stoop, kneel, bend, use hands to handle materials, manipulate tools, keyboard, and type, reach with hands and arms, and operate job-related equipment. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Sufficient visual acuity and hearing capacity to perform the essential functions and interact with people is required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Benefits and Relocation

• Medical, Dental, Vision, and Flexible Spending Accounts
• 401(k) with a 4.2% employer contribution and up to 4.8% match (regular positions) or self-contribute access (postdoctoral positions)
• Paid time off (personal leave)
• Employee Education Program (tuition assistance for eligible positions)
• Comprehensive Relocation Package
• Benefit eligibility subject to multiple factors, including employment status and position classification.

At this time, BEA will not sponsor any H1-B visas obtained outside of the United States of America (U.S.A.), including consular visas.

INL is a science-based, applied engineering national laboratory dedicated to supporting the U.S. Department of Energy's mission in nuclear energy research, science, and national defense. With more than 6,300 scientists, researchers, and support staff, the laboratory works with national and international governments, universities and industry partners to change the world's energy future and secure our nation's critical infrastructure.

INL Mission:

Our mission is to discover, demonstrate and secure innovative nuclear energy solutions, other clean energy options and critical infrastructure.

INL Vision:

Our vision is to change the world's energy future and secure our nation's critical infrastructure.

Selective Service Requirements:

To be eligible for employment at INL males born after December 31, 1959 must have registered with the Selective Service System (SSS). For more information see www.sss.gov.

Equal Employment Opportunity:

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employer. It is the policy of INL to provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information.

Reasonable Accommodation:

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

Other Information:

When applying to positions please provide a resume and answer all questions on the following screens. Applicants, who fail to provide a resume or answer the questions, may be deemed ineligible for consideration.