Manager, Applications Development 

Location: Birmingham, Alabama-The Energy Center

Schedule: Monday-Friday: *In-office required 4 days/week

SUMMARY

This position is responsible for owning and facilitating strategic delivery and support of technology solutions supporting the Operations and Commercial functions for Southern Power. The span of control includes centralized operations for Southern Power’s entire fleet of Natural Gas, Wind, Solar, and alternative clean technologies for power generation, as well as integrated Optimization and Transmission functions for maximizing the commercial value of the fleet’s generation. The position is responsible for extending foundational technology and delivering innovative technology to position Southern Power as a renewable energy market leader and drive synergies with the mature Gas & Renewables fleet. 

This position is the primary technology partner with Southern Power’s - Monitoring & Diagnostics (M&D) Center: Remote Operations Center (ROC): Renewable Operations: Commercial Optimization, Trading, and Transmission (COT&T); Generation Support leadership to continuously evolve and execute on their technology roadmap.

After influencing the approval of business cases, this position is responsible for the delivery and execution of identified projects. This position effectively delegates to team members and partners to identify internal and external data integration sources, deliver automated solutions which improve efficiency, transparency and accuracy of commercial and operational reports and analytics. The leader is accountable for follow through with business users and leaders on benefit realization through accelerated adoption of deployed technology.

This position is a member of the Southern Power Technology Solutions leadership team. The leader reports directly to the Director, Southern Power & PowerSecure Technology Solutions and is responsible for a team of 8 and a $3M budget with a project portfolio of $5-20M.

This position is a responsible for the successful management of production support and maintenance of existing business solutions, as well as the implementation and execution of new solution development.

MAJOR JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

• Partners with business leadership and other functional areas of the organization to ensure resources and strategies are aligned to current and future needs of the business.

• Drives innovation and leverages technology to create value and transform the business.

• Establishes and maintains excellent working relationships and partnerships with Operations and Commercial leadership, key business owners and influential power users as well as with external vendors and suppliers.

• Delivers technology solutions that are common where possible and custom where it counts.

• Drives and manages continuous improvement of technology delivery, maintenance, production support and reliability.

• Accountable for leveraging of shared systems and resources for scheduling, settlement and risk management.

• Accountable for ensuring communications of changes & planned outages with shared FOT & F&CS systems.

• Provides cost-effective management, rationalization and simplification of technology portfolio & projects.

• Provides thought leadership and consulting to business functions as well as technology partners.

• Creates a technology budget and manages financial performance holding technology partners accountable.

• Holds project management, business sponsors and core team members accountable for commitment to scope, resources, timelines, user adoption and benefit realization.

• Elicits key business requirements from business leaders, business owners to recommend, influence and accelerate technology solutions which automate processes, provide scalable reporting and analytics requiring the least amount of effort to implement and support yet achieve the desired business outcome and benefit.

• Establishes and enforces appropriate technology and business policies, practices and processes.

• Acts as a student of the business and technology, anticipating future needs and directional shifts in both the technology and energy industries.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

Education

• Degree in Computer Science or related field is required. An advanced degree is desirable.

Experience and Knowledge

• 5 or more years of experience in IT, with at least 2 years of experience managing multiple, small- medium sized and cross-functional teams often having to influence team members outside of direct control.

• Expertise with big data techniques, technologies and successful benefit realization of reporting, data analytics capabilities and multi-faceted solutions and platforms delivered with an agile business use case driven mindset.

• Direct experience with successful implementation of data management technologies such as Denodo and Databricks, alongside reporting and analytics tools such as Power BI, Tableau, Python, MATLAB, etc.

• Broad knowledge of information technology with a solid understanding of application development technologies and methodologies.

• Experience defining, executing and maintaining a technology roadmap that meets the strategic and operational objectives of the business.

• Broad knowledge of power generation and wholesale commercial competitive utility functions and an understanding of how the Technology Organization supports and enables scalable operations.

• Building strong teams, developing high performing individuals, identifying highest and best uses of talent, effectively delegating, cultivating partnerships, holding self & others accountable to commitments and results.

SKILLS

• The ability to lead and manage through change and recognized as a change agent.

• Combination of business & technology acumen, management and communications skills required to transform a technology team into the business partners technology provider of choice.

• Translate strategic technology directions into actionable next steps, work plans, projects and an overall roadmap that are aligned to business objectives, well understood by team members, engage business and technology partners for shared delivery, adoption and support.

• Knowledgeable about current and future technology trends with the ability to effectively deploy industry-changing technology that achieves market leading analytics capabilities on a scalable technology platform.

• Ability to effectively collaborate and ensure agile and effective delivery of applications, data automation, integration, reporting and analytics technology.

• Outstanding credibility to build strong relationships that foster accountability and proper sense of urgency within a fast paced, competitive business environment.

• Proven at building effective win-win partnerships with strategic vendors/suppliers.

• Proven ability to drive business process improvement and automation through delivering innovative technology capabilities, especially with data analytics, while maintaining operational service excellence.

• Ability to operate successfully in a regulated environment with an understanding and appreciation of risk, compliance, corporate policy and procedures, internal controls and regulatory requirements.

• Demonstrated ability to connect the dots, listen for input, apply sound business judgment communicating in a collaborative, persuasive, professional and effective manner.

• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to communicate very complex technical topics to various audiences.

• Self-starter who thrives on taking initiative to provide superior customer service through influence on cross functional teams including key business personnel and shared technology team members.

• Responsible for timely resolution of critical issues and outages, conducts root cause analysis, determines proactive monitoring and alerts for future potential recurrences as well as conclusive prevention.

• Ability to synthesize large amounts of information, determine solutions, and make quality and timely decisions.