Cloud Platform Architect

About the role

Xcel Energy is transforming its technology landscape to support reliable, secure, and sustainable energy delivery. The Cloud Platform Architect plays a critical role in this transformation by designing and governing the enterprise cloud foundation that supports applications, analytics, and grid-adjacent systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and govern enterprise cloud foundations on GCP, AWS, and Azure – serving as a thought leader in projects, networking, identity, security, and shared services.
• Establish cloud standards, patterns, and guardrails that enable teams to deliver solutions quickly and safely.
• Ensure cloud platforms align with Xcel Energy’s Architecture Tenets, including security, observability, reusability, and supportability.
• Enable workloads to run consistently across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments.
• Partner with security, infrastructure, operations, and delivery teams to ensure platforms are compliant, resilient, and operationally ready.
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and architectural guidance across the organization.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Technology, Science, Business or related field, or 4 years of experience equivalent to the position.
• Seven years of related functional experience.
• Exposure to diverse systems, technologies and processing environments in a large Corporate setting.
• Project solution architecture experience.
• Knowledge of core aspects of architecture (Software, Hardware, Network, Integration, Data, hosting models, platform types, etc.).
• Strong analytical, problem-solving and troubleshooting skills.
• Extensive knowledge of future technology trends within area of expertise.
• Excellent communication skills, effective with varying organizational levels and skill sets.
• Excellent Relationship Management and collaboration skills, with a track record of working as one team cross-organizationally to drive innovation and business results.

Preferred Requirements

• Eight or more years of experience in infrastructure, platform, or enterprise architecture roles.
• Five or more years of hands-on experience with public cloud platforms.
• Strong experience with Google Cloud Platform, including: Identity and access management, networking and connectivity, security and logging/monitoring services.
• Experience designing and operating cloud platforms in large, complex environments.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code and automation tools.
• Experience in regulated or mission-critical industries (utilities, energy, financial services, healthcare).
• Experience with hybrid and multi-cloud environments (Azure and/or AWS).
• Familiarity with security and compliance frameworks (e.g., NERC CIP, NIST).
• Cloud certifications such as: Google Professional Cloud Architect, Azure or AWS architect certifications, CISSP, CISM, or similar.