Manager, Load Forecasting

Southern Company • Atlanta, GA

1d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Manager, Load Forecasting is a leadership role on the Forecasting and Analytics team within the Planning and Regulatory Support organization. The role leads the team responsible for Southern Company’s official short- and long-term energy, peak demand, and revenue forecasts for its retail electric operating companies, including organic load growth and large-load segments.

Serving as the Director of Forecasting and Analytics’ primary forecasting deputy, the manager ensures forecasting methods, assumptions, outputs, documentation, and explanations are analytically sound, transparent, repeatable, and defensible for planning, financial, executive, and regulatory uses. The manager supports the Director in major regulatory proceedings and may serve as a company witness in smaller or targeted proceedings when appropriate.

The position manages team leads and technical professionals, develops talent and future leaders, and coordinates across operating companies and enterprise functions. It leads the annual forecasting and planning cycle and ensures monthly and quarterly economic monitoring and sales variance explanations remain aligned with annual forecast models and assumptions, without transferring recurring short-cycle reporting ownership to the forecasting team.

The ideal candidate combines analytical and statistical capability, utility planning knowledge, disciplined model governance, regulatory judgment, executive communication skills, intellectual curiosity, and demonstrated people-development ability. The role is intended as a development platform for broader enterprise forecasting, analytics, and regulatory leadership.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Finance, Engineering, Mathematics, Decision Sciences, Data Science, or a complementary discipline.
• At least 7 years of experience in utility planning, forecasting, analytics, economics, finance, regulatory support, engineering, consulting, or related functions.
• Demonstrated experience leading technical professionals, senior analysts, team leads, or cross-functional analytical workstreams.
• Strong understanding of forecasting, statistics, econometrics, customer usage analysis, economic drivers, planning processes, or comparable analytical disciplines.
• Experience developing, improving, documenting, validating, benchmarking, and defending analytical models, assumptions, tools, and results.
• Strong Microsoft Office skills, including PowerPoint, Excel, and Word.
• Strong analytical and statistical judgment, including the ability to distinguish signal from noise and turn uncertain information into practical planning frameworks.
• Excellent written, oral, and visual communication skills, including the ability to explain complex forecasting concepts to executives, technical experts, regulatory audiences, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to influence without direct authority across operating companies, functional teams, and enterprise planning processes.
• Strong project, portfolio, and deadline management skills, including prioritizing competing work and protecting team capacity.
• Demonstrated people-development capability, including coaching, delegation, feedback, accountability, succession planning, and developing future leaders.
• Intellectual curiosity, disciplined execution, independent thinking, sound judgment, humility, and willingness to improve methods and challenge assumptions.
• Demonstrated commitment to Southern Company values: Safety First, Unquestionable Trust, Superior Performance, and Total Commitment.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s degree, Ph.D., or other advanced technical or business degree.
• Experience managing managers or team leads.
• Utility experience, including exposure to load forecasting, integrated resource planning, financial planning, rate cases, regulatory filings, load research, pricing, demand-side management, large-load analysis, or system planning.
• Experience supporting regulatory filings, discovery responses, technical conferences, witness preparation, or testimony; prior witness experience is a differentiator.
• Working knowledge of forecasting, econometric, statistical, data-analytics, or visualization applications such as EViews, SAS, Python, R, SQL, Power BI, Excel, or comparable tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead completion of official energy, peak demand, and revenue forecasts for Southern Company and its retail electric operating companies.
• Own the annual forecasting process supporting resource planning, financial planning, capital planning, budgets, integrated resource plans, rate case inputs, and executive decision-making.
• Coordinate forecasting timelines, assumptions, deliverables, and stakeholder reviews to provide accurate, timely, and transparent outputs.
• Oversee the development, improvement, documentation, benchmarking, validation, and implementation of forecasting models, statistical methods, tools, and assumptions.
• Ensure forecasting methodologies can withstand internal review, regulatory challenge, and external stakeholder scrutiny; promote useful econometric, statistical, machine-learning, data-visualization, and business-intelligence tools.
• Support the Director of Forecasting and Analytics as the primary backup on forecasting matters in regulatory proceedings.
• Prepare, review, and coordinate forecasting analysis for testimony, discovery responses, technical conferences, regulatory filings, and stakeholder engagement; help defend methods, assumptions, sensitivities, and results.
• Serve as a company witness in smaller or targeted proceedings when appropriate and develop the team’s future witness capability.
• Synthesize load, customer, economic, weather, large-load, technology, and business-driver information into planning implications.
• Communicate forecasting results, uncertainty, sensitivities, risks, and business impacts to technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership.
• Engage with operating company counterparts and enterprise stakeholders, including System Planning, Finance, Regulatory, Pricing, Economic Analysis, Energy Efficiency, Load Research, and Demand Planning.
• Partner with the Sales and Economic Analysis Manager to align monthly and quarterly sales monitoring, economic analysis, and variance explanations with the official annual forecast, model structure, and planning assumptions.
• Provide forecast context and annual-cycle assumptions for recurring variance narratives while preserving forecasting-team capacity for model development, annual delivery, large-load analysis, and regulatory support.
• Lead analysis of uncertainty related to large loads, data centers, industrial growth, economic changes, electrification, distributed energy resources, customer-sited generation, load flexibility, weather trends, and changing customer usage.
• Develop scenario and sensitivity frameworks for planning trade-offs, executive decisions, and regulatory strategy; ensure emerging-load assumptions are documented and explainable.
• Lead team leads and technical forecasting professionals through clear expectations, coaching, delegation, accountability, and development planning.
• Develop team leads as owners of forecasting workstreams, including technical judgment, stakeholder engagement, documentation, presentation skills, and succession readiness.
• Foster curiosity, exploration, discipline, collaboration, inclusion, transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Prioritize competing work, align resources to deadlines, negotiate deliverable scope when needed, and maintain quality under planning and regulatory time constraints.
• Coordinate with operating company counterparts and enterprise stakeholders to sustain shared-service delivery in a hybrid work environment; escalate risks, resource constraints, methodological issues, and stakeholder-alignment concerns to the Director when appropriate.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary.
• Annual incentive awards for eligible employees.
• Health, welfare, and retirement benefits designed to support physical, financial, and emotional/social well-being.
• May be eligible for additional compensation, such as an incentive program; bonus or award amounts are subject to applicable plan terms and conditions.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager