Principal Network Solution Lead

Xcel Energy (NASDAQ: XEL) is a leading energy provider and Fortune 500 company, dedicated to serving millions of electricity and natural gas customers across eight states: Minnesota, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico and Texas. We make energy work better for our customers, helping them thrive every day. That means always raising the bar - delivering better service and providing more reliable, resilient, and sustainable energy.

Xcel Energy is a place where you'll have opportunities to grow, expand your skills, and help lead the clean energy transition. We offer meaningful rewards, recognition, and support to help you build your career and make an impact - both on the job and beyond. Most importantly, it means you'll be joining a company that knows employees are the driving force behind its success and is committed to helping you be your best.

Xcel Energy supports a hybrid work model to enable collaboration and flexibility. Many roles are expected to work onsite three days per week (Tuesday-Thursday); however, work location expectations vary based on role, team, and business needs.

Position Summary

The Principal IT Solutions Consultant serves as the senior technical and business advisor for enterprise communications infrastructure, wireless technologies, and wide-area networking solutions. This role provides strategic leadership, architecture guidance, technology roadmaps, and operational oversight for critical utility communications systems that support business operations, field workforce mobility, operational technology (OT), and utility-critical infrastructure.

The consultant partners with business leaders, engineering teams, operations organizations, vendors, and architecture groups to ensure communications technologies align with enterprise strategy, operational resiliency requirements, cybersecurity standards, and long-term investment objectives. The role is responsible for evaluating emerging technologies, driving modernization initiatives, reducing operational risk, and delivering innovative solutions that support utility operations and digital transformation objectives

Essential Responsibilities

• Relationship Management: Partner with business areas, customers and other stakeholders to understand needs and opportunities. Establish, maintain and develop collaborative partnership with internal partners. Provide coaching and work direction to less experienced team members.
• Solution Delivery: Lead and own efforts in end-to-end solution lifecycle from strategic planning, through demand management, delivery lifecycle activities, and operation. Ensure solutions drive great user experience and operational performance. Drive speed to deployments and continuous delivery to meet changing customer and stakeholder needs.
• Strategy & Planning: Lead and own efforts to understand operational health, customer satisfaction, and total cost of operation and build awareness of opportunities and risks. Represent business partners/stakeholders in strategic planning and investment prioritization.
• Operations Management: Drive alignment with stakeholders on maintenance activities and schedules. Ensure delivery practices uphold continuous integration of operational functions. Provide escalated support as needed to drive restoration of service disruptions.
• Subject Matter Expertise: Stay abreast of industry and technology trends to continuously improve solution delivery practices and customer satisfaction.

Minimum Requirements

• Ten years of related functional experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Technology, Science, Business or related field, or 4 years of experience equivalent to the position.
• Excellent communication skills, effective with varying organizational levels and skill set, and able to translate between technical and non-technical concepts.
• Excellent Relationship Management and collaboration skills, with a track record of working as one team cross-organizationally to drive innovation and business results.
• Experience with Project or Product delivery practices, including SDLC, Agile and Waterfall.
• Demonstrated ability to recommend innovative solutions to support complex business requirements.
• Ability to drive continuous improvement through lean, agile, six sigma.
• Demonstrated in depth knowledge of end-to-end process and system capabilities, industry standards and emerging technologies and methods.
• Expertise in technical, functional, and operational details of respective solutions.
• Excellent problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated ability to build functional and technical subject matter expertise, process and tools expertise, and drive consistency in processes.
• Experience with strategic planning, demand management, execution, and operation of IT solutions.
• Experience with contract and vendor management In-depth expertise on core IT components within the respective domain.

Preferred Requirements

• Ten or more years of progressive experience in enterprise networking, telecommunications, infrastructure architecture or a related discipline, including highly available and geographically distributed networks.
• Demonstrated experience designing hybrid WAN solutions incorporating private fiber/OPGW, carrier Ethernet/MPLS, microwave, commercial LTE/5G, Private LTE, SD-WAN, and satellite connectivity.
• Strong understanding of IT/OT network integration and critical-infrastructure use cases, including SCADA, teleprotection, metering, voice, security and field mobility.
• Proven ability to develop architecture standards, reference designs, decision matrices and repeatable implementation patterns from business and technical requirements.
• Experience incorporating resiliency, path diversity, availability, latency, bandwidth, cybersecurity, segmentation, and encryption requirements into network designs.
• Experience carrying solutions from architecture through engineering validation, field deployment, testing, documentation, and operational handoff.
• Demonstrated ability to influence across Architecture, Engineering, Cybersecurity, Field Operations, OT/business organizations, sourcing, carriers, and technology vendors.
• Ability to evaluate technical alternatives using reliability, risk, lifecycle, deployment velocity, capital investment and recurring operating expense.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present technology roadmaps, business cases and investment recommendations to senior leaders.
• Utility, energy, telecommunications or other critical-infrastructure experience and relevant advanced networking, security or architecture credentials are preferred.

Our culture is grounded in shared values and employee commitments that guide how we work, support one another, and grow together.

Our Values

Connected, Committed, Trustworthy, Safe

Our Employee Commitments

• Work that makes a difference
• A team you can count of
• Opportunities to grow
• Rewards that help you thrive

Xcel Energy provides job applicants reasonable accommodations for disabilities throughout the application process. If you are in need of an accommodation to complete the application process, now or at any time in the future, please complete the Applicant Accommodation Request Form.

Non-Bargaining

The anticipated starting base pay for this position is: $129,000.00 to $183,200.00 per year

This position is eligible for the following benefits: Annual Incentive Program, Medical/Pharmacy Plan, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account, Health Care Flexible Spending Account, Health Savings Account (HSA) (if enrolled in eligible health plan), Limited-Purpose FSA (if enrolled in eligible health plan and HSA), Transportation Reimbursement Account, Short-term disability (STD), Long-term disability (LTD), Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Fitness Center Reimbursement (if enrolled in eligible health plan), Tuition reimbursement, Transit programs, Employee recognition program, Pension, 401(k) plan, Paid time off (PTO), Holidays, Volunteer Paid Time Off (VPTO), Parental Leave

Benefit plans are subject to change and Xcel Energy has the right to end, suspend, or amend any of its plans, at any time, in whole or in part.

In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information including but not limited to dates of school attendance and graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

Deadline to Apply: 11/09/26

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All Xcel Energy employees and contractors share responsibility for protecting the company's information and systems by adhering to cybersecurity policies, standards, and best practices, recognizing that cybersecurity is everyone's responsibility.

Accessibility Statement

Xcel Energy endeavors to make https://www.xcelenergy.com and https://jobs.xcelenergy.com accessible to any and all users. If you are in need of an accommodation to complete the application process, now or at any time in the future, please complete the Applicant Accommodation Request Form. For any other application related questions, including application follow-ups or technical issues, please use our Recruiting Assistance, Electra, for assistance. Electra can be found in the lower right-hand corner of our Xcel Energy Careers site.