Senior Platform Engineer

Xcel Energy•Minneapolis, MN

2d•$130,000 - $165,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Platform Engineer is responsible for the design, administration, security, governance, and support of Xcel Energy's enterprise Databricks Lakehouse Platform across AWS and GCP. The role provides technical leadership for cloud-based data platform services, including platform operations, Unity Catalog, identity and access management, automation, monitoring, disaster recovery, and cost optimization. Working across data engineering, infrastructure, architecture, security, and business teams, the engineer ensures the platform is scalable, reliable, secure, and capable of supporting enterprise analytics, reporting, and AI/ML initiatives. The position leads and supports technical activities throughout the solution lifecycle, ensuring solutions provide a strong user experience and operational performance while integrating architecture, security, audit, operations, and compliance considerations. It contributes to strategic roadmaps and estimates, reviews and approves system changes and designs, mentors team members, monitors solution health, and provides escalated support for incident and problem management.

Requirements

Ten years of related functional experience.
Bachelor's degree in Technology, Science, Business, or a related field, or four years of experience equivalent to the position.
Excellent communication skills, including the ability to communicate across organizational levels and translate technical and non-technical concepts.
Excellent relationship management and collaboration skills, with a track record of cross-organizational teamwork that drives innovation and business results.
Expertise managing the lifecycle of technical solutions.
Deep subject matter expertise in relevant system-domain products, platforms, processes, and architecture.
Broad and deep knowledge of technology architecture, infrastructure, networking, security, and software principles and models.
Experience partnering with internal and external vendors.
Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and troubleshooting skills.
Extensive knowledge of future technology trends in the area of expertise.
Demonstrated technical leadership on large-scale projects.
Experience coaching developers in system deployment or operational troubleshooting.
Experience with delivery methodologies such as Waterfall, Agile, and Scrum, and operational models such as ITIL.
Experience and understanding of core IT Service Management functions, including Change Management and Incident Management.

Nice To Haves

Five or more years of hands-on experience administering and supporting the Databricks Lakehouse Platform in AWS and/or GCP environments.
Experience with AWS and GCP cloud services, including IAM roles and policies, service accounts, networking, storage, security integration, and resource governance.
Experience administering Unity Catalog and enterprise identity, access, security, and data governance controls.
Experience developing and supporting scalable data ingestion solutions using Databricks Lakeflow, ZeroBus, and other Databricks-native ingestion capabilities.
Experience integrating Databricks with external applications, BI tools, databases, data warehouses, data lakes, ingestion platforms, and ETL/ELT technologies.
Experience with Databricks Lakebase, including connectivity, security, administration, and application integration.
Experience designing and supporting Lakehouse Federation and secure federated data access across platforms and data sources.
Experience configuring, deploying, and maintaining Databricks workspaces, clusters, and associated cloud resources using infrastructure as code, preferably Terraform.
Strong working knowledge of SQL, Python, Apache Spark, GitLab CI/CD pipelines, MLOps, and Databricks Asset Bundles.
Experience monitoring and optimizing Databricks performance, reliability, scalability, security, compliance, and cloud costs.
Experience managing platform releases, upgrades, backup strategies, and disaster recovery capabilities.
Demonstrated ability to collaborate with data engineering, data science, BI, infrastructure, architecture, security, operations, and business teams to deliver enterprise Databricks solutions.
Experience in the utility or energy industry.

Responsibilities

Lead and support technical activities throughout the solution lifecycle, ensuring solutions are designed for user experience and operational performance.
Lead system design and integrate Enterprise Architecture, Security, Audit, Operations, and Compliance considerations.
Contribute to cost and schedule estimates and maintain the integrity of system design and operation.
Conduct peer reviews and approve system changes and technical solution designs.
Coach and mentor less experienced team members.
Partner across organizations to identify optimal solutions while minimizing costs, and provide technical information to stakeholders.
Innovate using emerging industry capabilities and evolving customer needs, and contribute to strategic roadmaps and technical dependencies.
Maintain and apply current technical industry knowledge in the relevant domain.
Review solution performance and assess system health; identify and raise awareness of operational and technical debt risks.
Provide escalated support for incident and problem management with vendors and internal teams.
Use analytics to improve availability, reliability, efficiency, and capacity.
Design, administer, secure, govern, and support the enterprise Databricks Lakehouse Platform across AWS and GCP.
Support platform operations, Unity Catalog, identity and access management, automation, monitoring, disaster recovery, and cost optimization.