Senior Data Architect

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.

Xcel Energy supports a hybrid work model to enable collaboration and flexibility. Many roles are expected to work onsite three days per week (Tuesday–Thursday); however, work location expectations vary based on role, team, and business needs.

Position Summary The Senior Data Architect is a key role within the IT organization and a hands-on architecture partner to delivery teams. This role advances enterprise data products and Xcel Data Fabric (XDF) adoption, with emphasis on Databricks Lakehouse, Unity Catalog, AWS, GCP, AI-ready data architecture, and governed integration and data-sharing patterns. The architect collaborates with peer architects, engineering teams, product teams, security, and data governance to translate business outcomes into practical, supportable solution designs across the full data lifecycle.

The role develops reusable reference architectures, patterns, and implementation guidance; produces architecture deliverables; and performs technical prototypes to validate designs and reduce delivery risk. Delivery teams retain ownership of detailed solution implementation and approvals, while the Senior Data Architect provides standards-based guidance, identifies risks and tradeoffs, and recommends governance escalation when appropriate.

Essential Responsibilities Architectural Operations:
Review and approve projects and work efforts to ensure that they are compliant with architectural standards. Track and manage exceptions to standards. Continuously improve operational processes. Assess, report, and make recommendations to eliminate operational risk related to technology or architecture.

Technical Expertise:
Advise delivery teams on hands-on data and solution architecture. Design data products and AI-ready solutions using XDF, Databricks Lakehouse, Unity Catalog, AWS, and GCP. Define integration, API, event, and data sharing patterns. Create reusable guidance and technical prototypes that reduce delivery risk.

Leadership:
Lead work cross-organizationally through coaching and feedback, and through significant interactions and influence with leaders. Govern work efforts to ensure alignment with reference architecture, IT strategy, and policy. Collaborate cross-organizationally to influence alignment on and adoption of enterprise architecture standards.

Planning and Strategy:
Participate in creation and renewal of an overarching IT strategy. Develop and enforce reference architecture standards that are aligned with IT strategies and principles. Contribute to architecture road maps and provide input to technology roadmaps. Ensure the domain IT Strategy aligns with Enterprise Architecture framework and standards.

Minimum Requirements Bachelor's degree in Technology, Science, Business or related field, or 4 years of experience equivalent to the position.

Ten years of related functional experience.

Architectur…