Vice President of Engineering

About the role

Mountain View Electric Association (MVEA) is one of the fastest growing mission-driven and member-owned electric cooperatives in Colorado. With offices in Falcon and Limon, our service territory spans 5,000 square miles from the foothills outside of Colorado Springs through the rolling plains of eastern Colorado. MVEA is proud to provide safe, reliable, and affordable electricity to more than 58,500 members and over 68,500 meters in portions of eight counties. The company has annual revenues of over $125 million and over 6,500 miles of distribution line. We are a respected leader in the distribution cooperative industry due to a long history of safety, reliable service, member engagement, financial health, rate stability, and employee dedication.

Responsibilities

• Leads and develops assigned teams to achieve organizational objectives by directing work, managing performance, and fostering employee growth.
• Collaborates with Human Resources on hiring, disciplinary actions, and employee relations while ensuring roles and responsibilities remain clearly defined and aligned with business needs.
• Reviews monthly to determine if goals and objectives are being met.
• Participates in management’s Executive Team meetings to assist in future planning, establishing policies, exchange and sharing of information, development of operating procedures, establishing departmental objectives, and confer on mutual issues.
• Assists the CEO in planning, developing, and implementing organizational initiatives and provides engineering updates, recommendations, and progress reports to the Board of Directors and Executive Leadership Team.
• Supports electric system resiliency, emergency preparedness, and risk mitigation strategies, infrastructure reliability improvements, contingency planning, and restoration readiness.
• Supports wildfire mitigation initiatives through engineering standards, infrastructure planning, risk analysis, and coordination with operations and vegetation management activities.

Requirements

• Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering or closely related engineering discipline required.
• Licensed Professional Engineer (PE) required or ability to obtain licensure in the State of Colorado within a defined period of employment.
• Minimum of ten (10) years of progressively responsible electric utility engineering experience, including significant leadership, supervisory, system planning, capital project, and utility operations coordination responsibilities.
• Demonstrated experience leading engineering personnel, organizational initiatives, capital improvement programs, and cross-functional utility projects in an electric utility environment.
• Experience with transmission and distribution engineering, substation systems, system protection, utility infrastructure planning, and electric system reliability strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience in utility budgeting, long-range planning, capital forecasting, and cost-benefit evaluation.
• Experience working with RUS standards, utility regulatory requirements, environmental compliance processes, and engineering governance practices preferred.
• Strong understanding of electric cooperative business principles, member service philosophy, and the operational, financial, and strategic objectives of a member-owned utility.
• Knowledge of applicable utility regulations, standards, and requirements, including Rural Utilities Service (RUS) requirements, National Electrical Safety Code (NESC), National Electrical Code (NEC), applicable federal and state laws, environmental requirements, and relevant regulatory guidance.
• Demonstrated executive leadership ability with proven success in workforce development, employee engagement, succession planning, performance management, coaching, conflict resolution, organizational development, and leading high-performing teams.
• Strong knowledge of utility financial management principles, including budgeting, capital planning, cost-benefit analysis, asset lifecycle management, cost-of-service concepts, long-range financial forecasting, and rate impacts.
• Knowledge of utility operational technologies and enterprise systems, including GIS, OMS, SCADA, AMI/metering systems, distribution automation, outage restoration systems, engineering modeling tools, communications systems, and related utility technologies.
• Exceptional verbal, written, presentation, and interpersonal communication skills, with the ability to communicate effectively and professionally with employees, members, contractors, consultants, vendors, regulatory agencies, executive leadership, the Board of Directors, and public stakeholders.
• Ability to develop collaborative working relationships and effectively coordinate cross-functional initiatives with Engineering, Operations, Finance, Safety, Information Services, Member Services, and Executive Leadership.
• Ability to effectively present technical and strategic information to executive leadership, the Board of Directors, public groups, regulatory entities, and industry partners.