Data Engineer

Xcel Energy (NASDAQ: XEL) is a leading energy provider and Fortune 500 company, dedicated to serving millions of electricity and natural gas customers across eight states: Minnesota, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico and Texas. We make energy work better for our customers, helping them thrive every day. That means always raising the bar - delivering better service and providing more reliable, resilient, and sustainable energy.

Xcel Energy is a place where you’ll have opportunities to grow, expand your skills, and help lead the clean energy transition. We offer meaningful rewards, recognition, and support to help you build your career and make an impact - both on the job and beyond. Most importantly, it means you’ll be joining a company that knows employees are the driving force behind its success and is committed to helping you be your best.

Position Summary

The Data Engineer will be a 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.
• 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.
• Subject Matter Expertise: Continuously stay current on, and apply, technical industry knowledge pertaining to the respective domain
• 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.

Minimum Requirements

• Seven 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.
• Experience managing the lifecycle of technical solutions.
• Deep Subject Matter Expertise within the respective system domain products, platforms, processes and architecture.
• Broad general knowledge of technology architecture, infrastructure, network, security and software principles and models.
• Experience working in partnership with internal and external vendors.
• Proven 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 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

• 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 well-designed, maintainable data solutions.

• Experience working with engineering standards including repository structures, CI/CD, testing frameworks, documentation, and release practices.

• Experience supporting the operability and reliability of data systems, including monitoring, alerting, and troubleshooting.

• Experience using AI-enabled development tools (e.g., Genie Code, Claude Code or similar) to enhance engineering productivity.

• Experience working within federated or self-service data environments and enabling domain teams to publish and consume data products.

• Experience developing production-quality applications and services using Python, APIs, and modern software engineering practices, with an emphasis on building maintainable, reusable data solutions.

Our culture is grounded in shared values and employee commitments that guide how we work, support one another, and grow together.

Our Values

Connected, Committed, Trustworthy, Safe

Our Employee Commitments

• Work that makes a difference
• A team you can count of
• Opportunities to grow
• Rewards that help you thrive

Xcel Energy provides job applicants reasonable accommodations for disabilities throughout the application process. If you are in need of an accommodation to complete the application process, now or at any time in the future, please complete the Applicant Accommodation Request Form.

Non-BargainingThe anticipated starting base pay for this position is: $97,600.00 to $138,600.00 per yearThis position is eligible for the following benefits: Annual Incentive Program, Medical/Pharmacy Plan, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account, Health Care Flexible Spending Account, Health Savings Account (HSA) (if enrolled in eligible health plan), Limited-Purpose FSA (if enrolled in eligible health plan and HSA), Transportation Reimbursement Account, Short-term disability (STD), Long-term disability (LTD), Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Fitness Center Reimbursement (if enrolled in eligible health plan), Tuition reimbursement, Transit programs, Employee recognition program, Pension, 401(k) plan, Paid time off (PTO), Holidays, Volunteer Paid Time Off (VPTO), Parental Leave

Benefit plans are subject to change and Xcel Energy has the right to end, suspend, or amend any of its plans, at any time, in whole or in part.

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Accessibility Statement

Xcel Energy endeavors to make https://www.xcelenergy.com and https://jobs.xcelenergy.com accessible to any and all users. If you are in need of an accommodation to complete the application process, now or at any time in the future, please complete the Applicant Accommodation Request Form. For any other application related questions, including application follow-ups or technical issues, please use our Recruiting Assistance, Electra, for assistance. Electra can be found in the lower right-hand corner of our Xcel Energy Careers site.