Senior Data Architect

Xcel Energy•Minneapolis, MN

3d•$112,000 - $165,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Data Architect is a senior technical leader responsible for advancing enterprise data architecture and driving a data product operating model that connects project delivery to an architectural north star. As a member of a cross-functional data product team, the role helps design, manage, deploy, maintain, and continuously improve data products as software products using agile product-team practices. The architect defines and governs reference architectures, reusable design patterns, and standards to modernize the data estate and enable trusted, discoverable, reusable data consumption through Xcel Data Fabric (XDF). The architect participates directly in project-level architecture design, translating business needs into end-to-end solutions and evaluating trade-offs across data modeling, integration, security, governance, scalability, and operational sustainability. In partnership with business partners, subject matter experts, data owners and stewards, developers, product owners, data engineers, enterprise architecture, and platform teams, the role guides domain-owned data products through definition, onboarding to XDF, deployment, maintenance, and evolution. This includes establishing clear ownership, data contracts, semantics, metadata, access controls, and service expectations. The role resolves complex design challenges, shapes technology direction, defines practical transition roadmaps, and influences adoption without direct authority. It connects near-term investment decisions to target architecture, promotes reuse over isolated solutions, and communicates the health, risks, and modernization needs of the data domain. Xcel Energy supports a hybrid work model; many roles are expected to work onsite three days per week, Tuesday through Thursday, with expectations varying by role, team, and business needs.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in technology, science, business, or a related field, or four years of experience equivalent to the position.
10 years of related functional experience.
Architecture acumen across multiple domains, including network, infrastructure, software, hosting models, mobile platforms, and security.
Exposure to diverse systems, technologies, and processing environments in a large corporate setting.
Project solution architecture experience.
General knowledge of core aspects of enterprise architecture, including software, hardware, network, integration, data, hosting models, and platform types.
Strong analytical, problem-solving, and troubleshooting skills.
Extensive knowledge of future technology trends within the area of expertise.
Demonstrated technical leadership on large-scale projects.
Excellent communication skills and effectiveness with varied organizational levels and skill sets.
Excellent relationship management and collaboration skills, with a track record of cross-organizational teamwork to drive innovation and business results.

Nice To Haves

Senior-level experience shaping enterprise data architecture and data product strategy, translating target-state vision into reference architectures, transition roadmaps, and adopted project solutions.
Deep expertise in conceptual, logical, and physical data modeling; domain boundaries; enterprise business semantics; and reusable data assets that remain stable as source systems evolve.
Experience defining domain-owned, contract-driven data products, including schemas, business definitions, ownership and stewardship, quality expectations, freshness, availability, access context, versioning, and lifecycle management.
Experience establishing repeatable data product onboarding and publication patterns for an enterprise data platform such as XDF, including discovery, metadata, lineage, security, consumer readiness, and operational support expectations.
Experience applying software-product engineering practices to data products, including version control, automated data and contract testing, continuous integration and delivery, release and rollback strategies, production monitoring, and ongoing maintenance.
Hands-on architecture experience across ingestion, transformation, storage, integration, and consumption, including evaluation of batch, event-driven, and near-real-time approaches and their performance, resilience, cost, and complexity trade-offs.
Ability to lead project-level architecture design, document consequential design decisions, assess alternatives, and guide engineering teams from solution definition through implementation while maintaining enterprise standards.
Experience defining reusable reference solutions for governed data sharing, analytics, and AI-ready consumption, reducing duplicated pipelines and consumer-specific logic through standardized interfaces and shared semantics.
Experience embedding data governance, classification, access controls, quality measurement, lineage, and observability into architecture designs in partnership with business owners, data stewards, security, and platform teams.
Ability to influence business and technology leaders without direct authority, facilitate cross-domain design decisions, mentor architects and engineers, and communicate architectural trade-offs and modernization priorities to executive and technical audiences.

Responsibilities

Review and approve projects and work efforts for compliance with architectural standards, and track and manage exceptions.
Continuously improve operational processes and assess, report, and recommend actions to eliminate technology- or architecture-related operational risk.
Consult with delivery and operational teams and provide direction on optimal solution architecture.
Maintain expertise in enterprise architecture technologies, frameworks, and industry innovations.
Lead cross-organizational work through coaching, feedback, and significant interactions with and influence on leaders.
Govern work efforts to ensure alignment with reference architecture, IT strategy, and policy.
Collaborate across the organization to influence alignment with and adoption of enterprise architecture standards.
Participate in creating and renewing overarching IT strategy.
Develop and enforce reference architecture standards aligned with IT strategies and principles.
Contribute to architecture roadmaps and provide input to technology roadmaps.
Ensure the domain IT strategy aligns with the Enterprise Architecture framework and standards.
Design end-to-end project solutions, evaluate architectural trade-offs, and guide domain-owned data products through their lifecycle.
Define and govern reference architectures, reusable design patterns, and standards that enable trusted, discoverable, and reusable data consumption through XDF.
Connect near-term investment decisions to target architecture, promote reuse, and communicate domain health, risks, and modernization needs.