Vice President of Engineering

The Vice President of Engineering provides executive leadership, strategic direction, and operational oversight for the Engineering Department to ensure the safe, reliable, cost-effective planning, design, construction, and operation of the Association’s electric distribution system. This position directs engineering strategy, infrastructure planning, regulatory compliance, system reliability initiatives, and capital improvement efforts while supporting the Cooperative’s strategic mission, vision, and values.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Leads and develops assigned teams to achieve organizational objectives by directing work, managing performance, and fostering employee growth. Collaborates with Human Resources on hiring, disciplinary actions, and employee relations while ensuring roles and responsibilities remain clearly defined and aligned with business needs.
• Responsible for the annual departmental budget, work plan, and capital purchases. Reviews monthly to determine if goals and objectives are being met.
• Participates in management’s Executive Team meetings to assist in future planning, establishing policies, exchange and sharing of information, development of operating procedures, establishing departmental objectives, and confer on mutual issues.
• Assists the CEO in planning, developing, and implementing organizational initiatives and provides engineering updates, recommendations, and progress reports to the Board of Directors and Executive Leadership Team.
• Leads the Engineering Department through effective workforce planning, employee development, succession planning, performance management, leadership development, and technical training to ensure long-term organizational stability.
• Promote a safe working environment by identifying and correcting safety issues, training needs, and accountability requirements.
• Responsible for the annual departmental budget, work plan, and capital purchases. Reviews monthly to determine if goals and objectives are being met. Assists in preparation of long-term financial forecasting, including cost of service studies and rate analysis.
• Leads long-range engineering and capital investment planning, including construction work plans, system expansion, load forecasting, asset lifecycle management, capital improvement prioritization, and infrastructure replacement strategies to support short- and long-term Cooperative objectives.
• Develops and oversees cost-benefit analyses and risk-ranking methodologies to prioritize engineering and capital projects and optimize system reliability, resiliency, and financial performance.
• Directs the planning, design, modification, and upgrade of substations, transmission, and distribution facilities while ensuring engineering practices align with Cooperative standards, RUS requirements, applicable codes, NESC standards, sound engineering principles, and prudent financial stewardship.

Requirements

• Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering or closely related engineering discipline required.
• Licensed Professional Engineer (PE) required or ability to obtain licensure in the State of Colorado within a defined period of employment.
• Minimum of ten (10) years of progressively responsible electric utility engineering experience, including significant leadership, supervisory, system planning, capital project, and utility operations coordination responsibilities.
• Demonstrated executive leadership ability with proven success in workforce development, employee engagement, succession planning, performance management, coaching, conflict resolution, organizational development, and leading high-performing teams.
• Experience with transmission and distribution engineering, substation systems, system protection, utility infrastructure planning, and electric system reliability strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience in utility budgeting, long-range planning, capital forecasting, and cost-benefit evaluation.
• Experience working with RUS standards, utility regulatory requirements, environmental compliance processes, and engineering governance practices preferred.
• Knowledge of applicable utility regulations, standards, and requirements, including Rural Utilities Service (RUS) requirements, National Electrical Safety Code (NESC), National Electrical Code (NEC), applicable federal and state laws, environmental requirements, and relevant regulatory guidance.
• Strong knowledge of utility financial management principles, including budgeting, capital planning, cost-benefit analysis, asset lifecycle management, cost-of-service concepts, long-range financial forecasting, and rate impacts.
• Knowledge of utility operational technologies and enterprise systems, including GIS, OMS, SCADA, AMI/metering systems, distribution automation, outage restoration systems, engineering modeling tools, communications systems, and related utility technologies.
• Ability to develop collaborative working relationships and effectively coordinate cross-functional initiatives with Engineering, Operations, Finance, Safety, Information Services, Member Services, and Executive Leadership.