Senior Data Architect

Job Description

Puget Sound Energy is on a mission to power the Pacific Northwest with reliable, sustainable, and innovative energy solutions. Our Data & AI organization is at the heart of this transformation—shaping the future of grid operations, clean energy initiatives, and AI-driven customer experiences. Now we’re seeking a Senior Data Architect to unify our diverse data landscape (on-prem, multi-cloud, and beyond) and ensure our data systems truly deliver for our customers, our region, and our planet.

Why This Role Matters

• Enormous Impact: The data architectures you create will influence everything from cutting-edge AI pilots to everyday operational efficiencies—powering better reliability, proactive outage prevention, and a greener, smarter grid.
• Transformative Environment: We face legacy integration challenges and skyrocketing AI demands—perfect for someone eager to build future-ready systems that help reduce carbon footprints and serve our community more effectively.
• Innovative Culture: Join us in modernizing how we store, move, and secure data, championing new frameworks and practices that can redefine utility operations for decades to come.

About You

• Strategic Visionary: You see data as the linchpin for optimizing energy distribution, driving AI use cases, and ultimately transforming how utilities operate.
• Technical Trailblazer: Hands-on mastery of data platforms (on-prem, AWS, Azure) coupled with a proven track record of large-scale architectural wins.
• Positive Influencer: People follow your lead because you know how to build real partnerships and excitement, bridging technical teams, business stakeholders, and external vendors.
• Product Mindset: You thrive on delivering tangible outcomes—iterating on architecture roadmaps that produce measurable improvements and ROI.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect & Evangelize: Research, analyze, and propose enterprise data strategies. Act as the go-to expert for multi-year visioning and architectural roadmaps.
• Establish Standards & Governance: Define guiding principles, policies, and reference architectures; ensure consistent data security, lineage, and quality across solutions.
• Collaborate with Delivery Teams: Mentor engineers, advise on platform roadmaps, and champion reuse and rationalization—making the most of IT investments.
• Integration & Feasibility: Evaluate and select products, ensuring interoperability across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid systems. Conduct feasibility studies and design reviews.
• Drive Outcomes: Own the results of major data initiatives—accelerating AI pilots, cutting downtime, or streamlining data flows—and showcase clear business impact.
• Ethics & Compliance: Promote a culture of total safety, uphold ethical standards, and embed regulatory compliance into every data strategy.

Join Us
If you’re looking to make a massive difference, driving genuine change in how a major utility harnesses data and AI to serve its community, we want you. Your technical leadership and passion can propel us into a smarter, cleaner, and more resilient future—one where your architectural choices genuinely matter to the well-being of millions.

Job Responsibilities

• Acts as prime spokesperson on company’s technical designs and future directions across multiple technology domains.
• Researches, analyzes, designs, and proposes solutions that are appropriate for the business and technology strategies, are in alignment with IT’s reference architecture, and that capitalize on the principles of technology rationalization and reuse to ensure efficient usage of PSE’s IT dollars. 
• Advises Solution Delivery Teams on development of Technology Element Roadmaps (e.g. database version roadmap, server platform roadmap).
• Works with Client Services and Solution Delivery on development of Technology Solution Strategies and Roadmaps.
• Has intuitive, holistic understanding of the most complex system designs and performance in unstable/dynamic or crisis situations based on broad and deep applied professional experience in a primary team with broad exposure to multiple segments to ensure effective technology integration.
• Develops technology policies, standards, frameworks and guiding principles.
• Understands the entire IT landscape at PSE based on broad and deep applied professional experience across all IT teams.
• Assesses the compatibility and integration of products/services proposed as standards to ensure an integrated architecture across interdependent technologies.
• Monitors technological advancements to ensure that proposed solutions are aligned with industry and company standards as well as emerging business requirements.
• Is a significant contributor to technology evaluation and selection efforts.
• Takes point on Technology Feasibility Assessments during project planning.
• Participates in design reviews.
• Spends a majority of time shaping longer-term vision, and less on project-specific activities.
• Operates under minimal direction.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, or related field.
• 15 years of IT architecture experience.
• 10 years’ experience working in a large-scale, complex IT environment.
• Ability to translate short and long-range strategic plans for architecture into design and implementation of current and future applications.
• Has deep technical expertise in three or more technology domains, and broad understanding of how that technology is used across multiple business functions, in multiple industries, to deliver business value.
• Is able to influence with credibility across multiple business functions or technologies with limited analysis.
• Excellent interpersonal, oral/presentation and written communication skills in both technical and non-technical language.
• Strong leadership, project and team building skills – ability to lead teams and drive projects and initiatives by working effectively with others with a demonstrated ability to work cross-departmentally.
• Strong collaborator – willingness to share ideas, documentation and best practices.
• Conceptual and analytical thinker – ability to extract, analyze and document complex business and technical requirements/strategies from customers and IT team members.

Desired Qualifications

• MS or MBA degree in Computer Science, or related field.
• Prior utility industry work experience.
• Prior consulting experience with a top-tier IT consultancy.
• Formal supervisor/managerial experience.
• ITIL/ITSM v3 Training and Certification.
• PMI PMP Certification.
   

Additional Information