Hybrid Senior IT Engineer – Platform Engineering

at Xcel Energy

• Job title: Senior IT Engineer – Platform Engineering
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: $112,200 - $159,400 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Cloud, EC2, ITSM, Kubernetes, Terraform
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Denver, United States

About the role

• Senior IT Engineer enhancing cloud platform and infrastructure reliability at Xcel Energy. Collaborating with teams to influence platform strategy and deliver high-impact capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain core cloud infrastructure across compute, networking, storage, IAM, and shared platform services.
• Develop secure, automated, and auditable environments using Terraform and Infrastructure‑as‑Code best practices.
• Lead platform and system design activities in alignment with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Compliance, and operational requirements.
• Collaborate closely with engineering teams to deliver high‑impact platform capabilities that increase reliability, scalability, performance, and developer velocity.
• Contribute to initiatives in containerization, observability, cost optimization, and AI platform enablement, while influencing architectural direction and platform strategy across the organization.
• Operate and optimize AWS environments to ensure availability, performance, efficiency, and capacity readiness.
• Continuously monitor and maintain system health while identifying technical debt and operational risks.
• Troubleshoot complex distributed system issues across compute, storage, networking, containers, and identity layers.
• Support daily cloud operations including incident response, problem management, scalability improvements, and quota/capacity planning.
• Implement and maintain monitoring, logging, alerting, and compliance controls in partnership with security and operations teams.
• Ensure all infrastructure follows cloud security best practices, including least privilege, secrets management, vulnerability handling, and policy enforcement.
• Stay current with emerging trends in cloud platforms, Kubernetes, DevOps, security, and infrastructure automation, and apply this knowledge to continuously evolve the platform.
• Serve as a subject matter expert for AWS services such as EC2, VPC, S3, RDS, Route 53, IAM, and ECS/EKS.
• Provide technical leadership and introduce innovative ideas that strengthen platform reliability, reduce cost to deliver, improve developer experience, and advance sustainability across the cloud ecosystem.
• Mentor and guide engineers to promote strong engineering practices and operational excellence.
• Conduct peer reviews, approve technical designs, and provide clear technical guidance to stakeholders.
• Partner effectively across architecture, product, data, platform, and security teams to deliver cohesive and efficient solutions.
• Oversee vendor activities related to the design, delivery, and operation of cloud services, ensuring alignment with organizational standards and platform objectives.

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.
• Expertise managing the lifecycle of technical solutions.
• Deep Subject Matter Expertise within the respective system domain products, platforms, processes and architecture.
• Broad and deep knowledge of technology architecture, infrastructure, network, security and software principles and models.
• Experience working in partnership with internal and external vendors.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving and troubleshooting skills.
• Extensive knowledge of future technology trends within area of expertise.
• Demonstrated leadership on technical aspects of large-scale projects.
• Experience coaching other developers in system deployment or operational troubleshooting.
• Experience with delivery methodologies (Waterfall, Agile, Scrum) and operational models (ITIL)
• Experience and understanding of core IT Service Management functions, such as Change Management and Incident Management.

Benefits

• Annual Incentive Program
• Medical/Pharmacy Plan
• Dental
• Vision
• Life Insurance
• Dependent Care Reimbursement Account
• Health Care Reimbursement 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