IT Solution Lead (Application Delivery)

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 Solution Lead is responsible for leading work within or across end-to-end solution lifecycle. They hold accountability for meeting business needs, supporting business strategy, and ensuring IT solutions have sound operation. They provide in-depth knowledge of the business needs, business processes, and corresponding solutions. They provide technical guidance in partnership with cross-organizational team members to ensure solutions align with architecture and IT strategy. They are a key contact to business, customer and stakeholder groups for their respective domain, helping ensure business needs and corresponding value and risk are well represented.

Essential Responsibilities

- Relationship Management: Partner with business areas, customers and other stakeholders to understand business needs and opportunities. Represent business partners/stakeholders in input to strategic planning and investment prioritization. Establish and maintain collaborative partnership with internal partners. Provide coaching and direction to less experienced team members.
- Solution Delivery: Participate in Demand Management preparation, lead and support delivery lifecycle activities, and ensure solutions are designed for great user experience and operational performance. Facilitate delivery meetings and ceremonies. Lead analysis and design. Provide needed plans, demo's, artifacts, and procedural documentation.
- Operations Management: Ensure solutions are designed for stable operation. Review solution performance, and continually assess health of systems and processes, driving action to avoid service disruption and minimize impacts. Drive alignment with stakeholders on maintenance activities and schedules.
- Subject Matter Expertise: Stay abreast of industry and technology trends to continuously improve solution delivery practices and customer satisfaction.

Minimum 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.
- Experience with project or product delivery practices, including SDLC, Agile, and Waterfall.
- Demonstrated ability to recommend innovative solutions to meet business needs.
- Ability to drive continuous improvement through lean and agile practices.
- Demonstrated in-depth knowledge of end-to-end process and system capabilities, as well as industry standards and emerging technologies and methods.
- Strong understanding of technical, functional, and operational details of respective solutions.
- Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
- Demonstrated ability to build functional and technical subject matter expertise, as well as process and tools expertise, and drive consistency in processes.
- In-depth knowledge or the ability to quickly attain expertise on core IT components within the respective domain.
- Excellent communication skills, effective with varying organizational levels and skill sets, and able to translate between technical and non-technical concepts.
- Excellent relationship management and collaboration skills, with a track record of working cross-organizationally to drive innovation and business results.

Preferred Requirements

Project Management experience in the following areas:

- Create and revise complex project plans for software development projects
- Lead status meetings, issue resolution meetings, design sessions
- Summarize key decisions, issues, and risks
- Work in a variety of mediums: in person, remote teams, email

Infrastructure, Systems & Lifecycle Governance experience in the following areas:

- Lead development and adoption of structured stage ‑ gate and lifecycle management frameworks to ensure technology solutions are planned, implemented, tested, secured, and transitioned into steady ‑ state operations with minimal disruption.
- Define standards for system readiness, cutover planning, recovery considerations, and long ‑ term operational ownership.
- Support lifecycle planning for enterprise systems, including documentation, support models, and transition to run ‑ state operations.

Financial & Vendor Management experience in the following areas:

- Lead IT financial governance activities, including budget planning support, prioritization, financial reporting, and investment transparency.
- Support vendor sourcing activities (RFPs, SOWs, MSOWs), contract standards, and vendor performance oversight.
- Coordinate with finance, procurement, and external partners to ensure compliance with purchasing policies and budget controls.
- Supported vendor invoicing, accruals, purchasing processes, and contract compliance.

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: $118,101.00 to $150,000.00 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: 11/01/26

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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.