Senior Data Engineer

Sr. Data Engineer

The Sr. Data Engineer will be a senior hands-on engineer on the Xcel Vision Suite (XVS) Data & Applications Engineering team, reporting to the Manager of Data & Applications Engineering. This role will build and evolve the data pipelines, internal applications, dashboards, and engineering workflows that support XVS across generation, transmission, distribution, and gas planning.

The position works closely with Product, Data Science, Enterprise IT, and external consultants to turn planning workflows, data science outputs, and consultant-delivered solutions into maintainable internal capabilities. This role will help establish and follow standards for code quality, testing, documentation, deployment, and knowledge transfer, while contributing to a practical, scalable approach for how XVS tools are built, shipped, and maintained over time.

The role requires strong technical judgment, comfort working in ambiguity, and the ability to translate loosely defined needs into usable tools and data products for planners and engineers. It also includes applying automation and AI-assisted development practices to improve delivery speed, consistency, and quality.

Essential Responsibilities

• Solution Delivery: Lead and support solution lifecycle technical activities. Ensure solutions are designed for great user experience and operational performance. Lead design, ensuring Enterprise Architecture, Security, Operations and Compliance aspects are continuously integrated into solutions. Provide input to cost and schedule estimation. Responsible for overall integrity of system design and operation. Oversee vendor activities.
• Relationship Management: Conduct peer reviews and approve system changes and technical solution design. Coach and mentor less experience team members. Partner cross-organizationally to drive minimal costs on optimal solutions. Provide in-depth technical information to stakeholders as needed.
• Strategy & Planning: Innovate through usage of industry emerging capabilities and evolving customer needs. Provide input to strategic roadmap and technical dependencies.
• Subject Matter Expertise: Continuously stay current on, and apply, technical industry knowledge pertaining to the respective domain
• Operations: Review solution performance, and continually assess health of systems. Track and drive awareness to operational and technical debt risks. Provide escalated support to incident and problem management. Utilize analytics to improve availability, reliability, efficiency and capacity. Oversee vendor activities.

Minimum Requirements

• Ten years of related functional experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Technology, Science, Business or related field, or 4 years of experience equivalent to the position.
• Excellent communication skills, effective with varying organizational levels and skill set, and able to translate between technical and non-technical concepts.
• Excellent Relationship Management and collaboration skills, with a track record of working as one team cross-organizationally to drive innovation and business results.
• Expertise managing the lifecycle of technical solutions.
• Deep Subject Matter Expertise within the respective system domain products, platforms, processes and architecture.
• Broad and deep knowledge of technology architecture, infrastructure, network, security and software principles and models.
• Experience working in partnership with internal and external vendors.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving and troubleshooting skills.
• Extensive knowledge of future technology trends within area of expertise.
• Demonstrated leadership on technical aspects of large-scale projects.
• Experience coaching other developers in system deployment or operational troubleshooting.
• Experience with delivery methodologies (Waterfall, Agile, Scrum) and operational models (ITIL).
• Experience and understanding of core IT Service Management functions, such as Change Management and Incident Management.

Preferred Requirements

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or related field.
• Hands-on experience with Databricks (jobs/workflows, Delta tables, performance tuning, Unity Catalog, access controls).
• Experience implementing Medallion architecture (Bronze/Silver/Gold), feature pipelines, and data quality frameworks.
• Experience building and maintaining internal data applications (Databricks apps, Lakebase, dashboards,) integrated with enterprise platforms.
• Ability to translate ambiguous business needs into scalable data architectures and delivery plans.
• Experience establishing engineering standards including repository structures, CI/CD, testing frameworks, documentation, and release practices.
• Experience improving operability and reliability of data systems (monitoring, alerting, SLAs/SLOs).
• Experience using AI-enabled development tools (e.g., Genie Code, Claude Code or similar) to enhance engineering productivity.
• Databricks Data Engineering Professional Certification.
• Experience working within federated or self-service data environments and enabling domain teams to publish and consume data products.

As a leading combination electricity and natural gas energy company, Xcel Energy offers a comprehensive portfolio of energy-related products and services to 3.4 million electricity and 1.9 million natural gas customers across eight Western and Midwestern states. At Xcel Energy, we strive to be the preferred and trusted provider of the energy our customers need. If you're ready to be a part of something big, we invite you to join our team.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.

Individuals with a disability who need an accommodation to apply please contact us at View email address on click.appcast.io.