Data Platform Lead - IT Transformation

POSITION DESCRIPTION

THE COMPANY

Onward Energy is an independent power platform that owns and operates over 7 GW of utility-scale wind, solar and natural gas generation projects across the U.S. Our Vision is to reliably power a sustainable future. Our Mission is that as North America’s premier independent power generator, we will deliver renewable and reliable power to our customers, opportunities to our employees, sustainable returns to the families who invest in us, and a better world to the next generation. Corporate Offices in Denver, New York and Charlotte, we are where renewable meets reliable. See www.onwardenergy.com for more information.

THE CHALLENGE

The Data Platform Lead on the IT Transformation Team plays a foundational role in building the data platform that will power Onward Energy’s next phase of growth. The Data Platform Lead will partner with the Transformation Manager and business stakeholders to design, implement, and support a cloud-hosted data repository at Onward. The Data Platform Lead’s efforts will directly impact how Onward Energy can reduce manual effort around data, surface operational performance in real time, and unlock future AI and automation use cases across the fleet.

THE ROLE

Reporting to the IT Transformation Manager, you will help design, build, and operate the ingestion, transformation, and serving pipelines that make up Onward’s enterprise data platform. The target architecture is a cloud-hosted data lakehouse[LD1] (within DataBricks, etc.) with Power BI as the delivery layer, integrating core systems such as AVEVA PI, Ignition, Maximo, and Workday alongside ISO/market, weather, and other external data sources. You will partner directly with Operations, Performance Engineering, Asset Management, SCADA, Power Markets, and FP&A to translate spreadsheet-based logic and tribal knowledge into governed, reproducible data products. This hands-on position demands strong technical depth, a business-first mindset, comfort with ambiguity, and a genuine interest in shaping how an organization uses its data.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Partner with Solar / Wind / Thermal Operations, Performance Engineering, Asset Management, and other teams to discover and prioritize the first data use cases – contributing to stakeholder interviews, mapping current Excel-based workflows, and defining what to build first on the platform.
• Design, build, and maintain ingestion and transformation pipelines in Databricks to bring operational data from AVEVA PI, Ignition, Maximo, Workday, and ISO/market sources into a governed Lakehouse — covering wind, thermal, and solar assets.
• Serve as the technical counterpart to external consulting partners engaged in the platform build, translating business requirements into pipeline specifications, validating deliverables, and ensuring work aligns with Onward's long-term architecture.
• Own long-term pipeline reliability end-to-end: define data availability and quality standards, build monitoring and alerting, and resolve ingestion or transformation failures before they impact downstream reporting.
• Contribute to data governance practices - including ownership models, role-based access for sensitive operational and financial data, and quality standards.

THE PROFILE TO SUCCEED

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
• 4+ years of hands-on data engineering experience building and operating production pipelines and data models.
• Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous business problems into well-scoped technical work and to define structure where none exists.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to engage credibly with both engineers and non-technical business stakeholders.
• Experience integrating data from heterogeneous source systems - APIs, file-based feeds, relational databases, and time-series or historian data.
• Production experience building pipelines in Python and SQL on Spark/Databricks or a comparable distributed framework.
• Experience scheduling, orchestrating, and monitoring data pipelines - whether through Databricks Workflows, Airflow, or similar tools.
• Experience designing and managing table structures in a Lakehouse or Warehouse environment – including incremental merge patterns, schema evolution, and partitioning strategies.
• Experience implementing or operating data governance tooling — including access controls, lineage tracking, and data cataloging — in a Lakehouse or warehouse environment. Experience with Unity Catalog preferred.
• Working knowledge of core Azure services in a Databricks context (storage, identity, secrets management) and ability to navigate the ecosystem independently.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• 2+ years in management or technology consulting, demonstrating comfort with ambiguity, a business-first approach to requirements, and the ability to balance an engineering skillset with a business analyst skillset.
• Energy industry experience (generation, utilities, ISO/RTO markets) or familiarity with operational technology data such as SCADA or CMMS platforms.
• Experience with at least one greenfield or early-stage platform build (Databricks is preferred) where a focus on design / architecture was required.
• Familiarity with Power BI semantic modeling and DAX, including how to structure datasets on top of a Lakehouse for performant, self-service reporting.

THE TEAM

Onward Energy team is comprised of industry professionals who embrace collaboration, dedication, and hard work while also being down to earth. At Onward Energy, we seek to find solutions rather than assign blame.

THE WORK ENVIRONMENT

OFFICE - The position functions in a smoke and vape free professional office environment. The role routinely utilizes standard office equipment such as laptop computer, phone, and scanner/photocopier.

THE TOTAL REWARDS

Onward Energy total rewards philosophy is motivated by a key tenet of People First and offers associates a comprehensive total rewards package which includes market competitive compensation, health, life insurance, and retirement savings benefits.

If you require an accommodation for any part of the employment process due to a disability to [email protected].

EEO STATEMENT:

Onward Energy is an Affirmative Action Employer, Females/Minority/Veterans/Disabled/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity.

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice.