Product Owner - Agentic Voice Response (AVR)

Xcel Energy (NASDAQ: XEL) is a leading energy provider and Fortune 500 company, dedicated to serving millions of electricity and natural gas customers across eight states: Minnesota, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico and Texas. We make energy work better for our customers, helping them thrive every day. That means always raising the bar - delivering better service and providing more reliable, resilient, and sustainable energy. 
Xcel Energy is a place where you’ll have opportunities to grow, expand your skills, and help lead the clean energy transition. We offer meaningful rewards, recognition, and support to help you build your career and make an impact - both on the job and beyond. Most importantly, it means you’ll be joining a company that knows employees are the driving force behind its success and is committed to helping you be your best.

Xcel Energy supports a hybrid work model to enable collaboration and flexibility. Many roles are expected to work onsite three days per week (Tuesday–Thursday); however, work location expectations vary based on role, team, and business needs.

Position Summary
Accountable for the development and execution of the vision, strategy and stakeholder alignment necessary to deliver on the Xcel Energy priority to enhance the customer experience through AI-enabled voice self-service (AVR). The Product Owner will be responsible for building new and strengthening existing relationships to ensure alignment to the broader organizational objectives, while creating new growth opportunities. Serves as the subject matter expert and holds Xcel product decision rights, responsible for developing and delivering the product vision and roadmap to meet organizational milestones. They will apply agile principles and processes to lead a development team of Xcel and vendor partners to ensure work is prioritized to focus on those with maximum value and aligned with the product vision. Responsible for identifying and capturing customer feedback, understanding trends, applying market and user research, and relevant data points.
Essential Responsibilities

• Lead the strategy and development for AVR and related Xcel Energy customer AI experiences, providing scalable and best in class capabilities. Responsible for all product delivery team work and success criteria. Manage business stakeholders and proactively develop solutions that address problems and meet objectives. Work with stakeholders to provide effective change management, including contact center readiness, to create a successful product delivery.
• Create product vision and oversee the development of the product roadmap to align to the overall organizational digital transformation strategy. Set goals and KPIs, such as containment, customer effort and cost to serve, which reflect customer needs and the company strategy with the ultimate goal of quality.
• Clearly define user stories, refine requirements and backlog according to product roadmap. Effectively communicate needs of users to design and engineering teams. Test development to confirm that it meets requirements and accessibility and responsible AI standards.
• Test product with end users to make sure it meets customer needs. Monitor and document results to ensure that product development activities achieve strategies, adhere to process, maintain schedule, manage risk and budget. Accept or reject vendor deliverables against defined acceptance criteria.
• Lead agile scrum team (~15 members) to successfully implement initiatives and achieve goals while providing coaching, managing performance expectations and escalation of issues appropriately and effectively. Lead sprint meetings as dictated by program or team charter, which may include but are not limited to, sprint planning, daily stand ups, sprint reviews, and demonstrations to stakeholders.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in business, marketing, project management, design or related fields or a combination of education and experience providing equivalent knowledge.
• Minimum of 8 years of experience in business, marketing, project management, product management, or 4 years of direct Agile product management experience.
• A strong collaborator with a proven ability to build and maintain senior level relationships.
• Ability to effectively communicate to a variety of audiences and break down complex scenarios.
• Demonstrated leadership abilities, including decision making through ambiguity and influence on immediate and longer-term strategies.
• In-depth knowledge with Agile process and principles (Scrum, SAFe, Kanban).
• Proven success working with cross functional teams and stakeholders on large strategic and product management initiatives.
• Experience implementing customer and/or employee digital solutions and processes.

Preferred Requirements

• Experience developing, deploying or managing AI agents (for example, conversational, voice or generative AI agents) in a customer-facing environment.
• Experience monitoring and improving AI agent performance in production, including evaluation, accuracy, drift, safe human handoff and responsible AI controls.

Our culture is grounded in shared values and employee commitments that guide how we work, support one another, and grow together.

Our Values

Connected, Committed, Trustworthy, Safe

Our Employee Commitments

• Work that makes a difference
• A team you can count of
• Opportunities to grow
• Rewards that help you thrive

Xcel Energy provides job applicants reasonable accommodations for disabilities throughout the application process. If you are in need of an accommodation to complete the application process, now or at any time in the future, please complete the Applicant Accommodation Request Form.

Non-Bargaining The anticipated starting base pay for this position is: $97,600.00 to $138,600.00 per year This position is eligible for the following benefits: Annual Incentive Program, Medical/Pharmacy Plan, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account, Health Care Flexible Spending Account, Health Savings Account (HSA) (if enrolled in eligible health plan), Limited-Purpose FSA (if enrolled in eligible health plan and HSA), Transportation Reimbursement Account, Short-term disability (STD), Long-term disability (LTD), Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Fitness Center Reimbursement (if enrolled in eligible health plan), Tuition reimbursement, Transit programs, Employee recognition program, Pension, 401(k) plan, Paid time off (PTO), Holidays, Volunteer Paid Time Off (VPTO), Parental Leave

Benefit plans are subject to change and Xcel Energy has the right to end, suspend, or amend any of its plans, at any time, in whole or in part.

In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information including but not limited to dates of school attendance and graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information.

Deadline to Apply: 11/16/26

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Accessibility Statement

Xcel Energy endeavors to make and accessible to any and all users. If you are in need of an accommodation to complete the application process, now or at any time in the future, please complete the Applicant Accommodation Request Form. For any other application related questions, including application follow-ups or technical issues, please use our Recruiting Assistance, Electra, for assistance. Electra can be found in the lower right-hand corner of our Xcel Energy Careers site.