Cloud Jobs in Aurora, IL

Director, Technology Strategy & Enablement

Southern Company Services is seeking a Director of Technology Strategy & Enablement to lead the Technology Organization's horizontal strategy function. This role is responsible for developing the overarching technology strategy, multi-year capability roadmaps, technology OKRs, and value realization framework that enable Southern Company's business and transformation objectives.

Operating across the Technology Organization, this leader will aggregate demand and strategic requirements from Electric, Gas, Enterprise, and Shared Services portfolios to identify common capability needs, strategic dependencies, and opportunities for platform reuse and standardization. Working closely with Architecture, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering, Cybersecurity, Data & AI, and Application leaders, the Director will help ensure foundational technology capabilities are planned, aligned, and available to support future business needs.

This role serves as a strategic enabler and connector across the Technology Organization. It is accountable for technology strategy, capability planning, alignment, and value measurement. It does not own project delivery, portfolio execution governance, application business ownership, or investment approval authority.

Major Job Responsibilities:

• Lead the Technology Organization's strategic planning process and translate enterprise priorities into a cohesive technology strategy and multi-year capability roadmap.
• Partner with business strategy, operating company, and functional leadership teams to translate business objectives, growth strategies, regulatory requirements, and operational priorities into technology capabilities, roadmaps, and investment recommendations.
• Lead strategic assessments and recommendations for the Technology Organization operating model, including organizational capabilities, governance, sourcing strategies, workforce planning, and service delivery models required to support future business needs.
• Aggregate demand across technology portfolios to identify shared foundational capabilities, strategic dependencies, and opportunities for reuse, standardization, and cost optimization.
• Develop and maintain 3-5 year technology capability roadmaps that support business transformation, modernization, and innovation objectives.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering, Cybersecurity, Data & AI, and Application leadership to align technology strategies and investment priorities.
• Identify technology capability gaps, platform overlap, technical debt reduction opportunities, and future-state enablement requirements.
• Establish and manage Technology Organization OKRs, executive scorecards, and dashboards that measure strategic progress, organizational performance, and value realization.
• Translate strategic priorities into roadmap recommendations, investment themes, and executive decision support materials.
• Support technology investment planning by providing strategic insights, capability requirements, business outcome alignment, and expected value realization.
• Partner with PMO, Application VPs, and business stakeholders to ensure alignment between technology strategy, portfolio priorities, and execution plans while maintaining clear ownership within each organization.
• Drive visibility and transparency into Technology Organization performance, ensuring leaders can effectively measure outcomes, business value, and strategic impact.

Knowledge and skills:

Leadership, Change & People Management

• Transformational Leadership & Talent Development: Recognized as a change agent who challenges the status quo. Demonstrated ability to attract top talent, build high-performing teams, and lead with well-defined core values.
• A Proactive, "Business-First" Mentality: Applies sound business judgment to "connect the dots," with a relentless focus on removing friction, clearing roadblocks, and partnering with the business to accelerate transformation.

Influence, Collaboration & Communication

• Executive Influence & EQ: High emotional intelligence with outstanding credibility. Demonstrated ability to influence senior management
• Exceptional Communication: Superb written and verbal communication skills, with extensive experience presenting to, advising, and building strong relationships with executive leadership, steering committees, and key vendors.

Strategic Technology & Portfolio Capabilities

• Enterprise Portfolio & Financial Acumen: Demonstrated ability to manage large-scale technology investment portfolios, establish capability roadmaps, and define value-realization frameworks (such as OKRs) to track technology ROI.
• Strategic Technology & AI Fluency: Strong conceptual understanding of modern technology paradigms specifically Cloud architectures, Data Platforms (e.g., Databricks), AI/MLOps, and high-density Telecom with the ability to translate complex concepts into business outcomes.
• Horizontal Capability Synthesis: Proven success in aggregating fragmented technology demands from multiple business units (e.g., Power Delivery, Gas, Customer Service) into unified, shared-platform strategies to prevent redundant investments.
• Tech-for-Tech Strategy Facilitation: Demonstrated ability to partner with core engineering leaders to facilitate long-term strategic roadmaps for back-end technical functions (Infrastructure, platforms) to reduce technical debt.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
• MBA or Master's degree (e.g., MS in Technology Management or Information Systems) is highly preferred.

Experience:

• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in technology strategy, enterprise architecture, portfolio management, technology consulting, or related disciplines.
• Demonstrated success developing enterprise technology strategies, capability roadmaps, and value realization frameworks.
• Experience establishing OKRs, executive scorecards, and performance measurement programs.
• Demonstrated experience shaping strategies for modern data environments, AI enablement, cloud transformations, and proactive enterprise security protocols.
• Extensive experience interfacing with non-technical business executives, representing IT on steering committees, and driving consensus across highly matrixed, cross-functional organizations.
• Experience operating within large, complex, regulated organizations.

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic and enterprise thinker
• Trusted advisor and relationship builder
• Strong business and financial acumen
• Executive presence and stakeholder influence
• Collaborative leadership style with high emotional intelligence
• Ability to translate strategy into measurable business outcomes