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SouthStar Technology Director 

Job Summary

The Southern Company Technology Organization and SouthStar Energy are in search of their next Technology Director to plan and deliver on a critical multi-year Customer Transformation to implement their next generation Customer Information System (CIS) platform and develop their next generation of talent while simultaneously enabling AI-driven innovation across their trading and customer operations.  This leader will modernize legacy vendor products and proprietary .Net systems into a new platform that enables speed, scale and resilience.  This role requires a proven transformation executor who has led platform modernization and can translate business strategy into measurable outcomes, while aligning with enterprise capabilities across data, AI, security, and infrastructure.  

SouthStar Energy Services is one of the largest competitive retail gas marketing businesses across the United States with a $1B+ valuation.  SouthStar operates in fast-paced business cycles and invests in technology to maintain competitive advantage.  SouthStar is embarking on a business and technology transformation plan for their next generation retail customer platform for the 2030s.  Currently serving over 700K customers across 10 different states and 20 Local Distribution Companies (LDCs) across the eastern United States, SouthStar operates a trading floor which transports their gas purchases across federally regulated interstate pipelines into the local distribution markets they serve on an hourly basis during each gas day cycle.  SouthStar d/b/a Georgia Natural Gas (GNG) has the largest market share of the only fully unbundled deregulated natural gas market in the country, Atlanta Gas Light Company.  GNG owns the primary customer care relationship to their 500K customers including billing, payment processing, credit and collections, turning on/off and switching to/from service through GNG.  

The SouthStar Technology Director role is responsible for delivering a durable technology platform that scales, aligns with enterprise capabilities, and enables future innovation in data and AI without being constrained by legacy architecture and minimizes the risk of vendor lock-in.  The role leverages technology strategies for delivering superior business outcomes, proactively reducing risk, engineering the future of data and AI and elevating people experience to drive measurable results in both the short and long term for SouthStar.  The role ensures architectural guiding principles are leveraged such that technology is scalable, automated, standardized, API enabled, built for optionality and continuous delivery.  The role has responsibility for a $12M budget and a team of 25 FTEs including analysts, developers, an architect, and directly manages key contractor partners. The position collaborates across Infrastructure, Security, Vendor & Project Management to ensure SouthStar's business needs are met.  The position defines capability roadmaps and executes against them to deliver measurable key results that drive positive impact on the core business.  The position requires business and technology acumen to increase partnership, deliver results, and drive innovation for the future.  Proven experience in shaping learning cultures to elevate collaboration, develop talent, and ensure accountability is a key to success.  Expertise across multiple domains is preferred, such as energy trading and risk management, customer information systems, application development, data management, data analytics platforms, predictive analytics and AI tools.  

Essential Duties

• Partners with Retail Customer Operations to plan and execute a significant business and technology transformation program estimated between $20-$40M over 3-4 years that will include implementation of a new Customer Information System (CIS) platform retiring the legacy systems, staffing and developing next generation talent, optimization of business processes leveraging modern data & AI capabilities. 

• Delivers energy trading and risk management technology platform that improves automation, productivity and intelligent asset optimization leveraging data and AI.

• Improve digital experiences for customers through more effective technology architecture and delivery optimizing the use of strategic partners.   

• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices embedding cybersecurity, telemetry, and technology process automation.

• Build a platform strategy adhering to architecture principles that prioritize standardization, reuse, and interoperability across cloud/hybrid environments while minimizing vendor lock-in.

• Operationalize data management and leverage enterprise capabilities to deliver AI solutions.

• Frequently communicate technology progress, risks and opportunities to senior leadership.

• Manage and optimize $10M annual CapEx and $2M annual O&M technology budget for value.

• Evolve technology roadmap into a capability roadmap that measures business value creation.

• Define talent strategy and develop organization leveraging key contractor resource knowledge.

• Partner with Cybersecurity to accelerate remediation of vulnerabilities

• Partner with Electric & GAS Customer to leverage CIS capabilities and learnings.

• Negotiate and manage key contracts with key vendors for both delivery and support.

• Ensure federal and state regulatory compliance with FERC and Public Service Commissions.

• Enforce all appropriate technology and business policies, standards, practices and processes.

Skills/Experience

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field.

• MBA or equivalent experience preferred.

• 10 or more years of experience in IT with 5 years managing multiple, cross functional teams.

• 5+ years' experience with recommending, estimating, designing, building and supporting custom application and data solutions for business functions such as customer billing, trading and risk.

• Planning and delivery of a complex business & technology transformation program.

• Balance strategic thinking with execution rigor and deep architectural engagement.

• Champions engineering-first culture focused on automation, ownership, and results.

• Builds high-performing, cross-functional teams aligned to business outcomes.

• Technology talent development experience including motivating key partners through change.

• Preferred experience modernizing legacy application ecosystems (e.g., .NET, Java) into cloud-agnostic, modular platforms leveraging containerization, API-first design, and event-driven architectures, enabling interoperability across hybrid environments, and AI-enabled workflows.

• Preferred experience defining capability roadmaps used to drive business results.

• Servant leader adept at balancing business and technology needs with people needs.

• Proven ability to drive efficiency and discipline through data driven measures of performance.

• Proven success in a fast-paced environment managing risk and compliance.