Principal Designer Jobs in Minnesota

Are you looking for an exciting job where you can put your skills and talents to work at a company you can feel proud to be a part of? Do you want a workplace that will challenge you and offer you opportunities to learn and grow? A position at Xcel Energy could be just what you’re looking for.

Position Summary

This role designs and governs how content and digital assets are structured, stored, found, and reused across every customer-facing channel at Xcel Energy. Sitting at the intersection of content strategy, library science, and digital platforms, the Content Architect and DAM Governance Lead makes sure a single source of truth powers the website, mobile app, email, and emerging AI experiences. The role is foundational for a utility standing up a new Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) stack: decisions made in the first 90 days about content models and asset governance will shape every downstream customer experience for years. The role also owns the trust and authenticity controls for safety-critical media used during outages, storms, and restoration, and the plain-language content patterns that make rates and bills understandable to customers.

Responsibilities

• Build the content foundation that lets Xcel Energy publish once and reuse everywhere, so customers see consistent rates, programs, and outage information across web, mobile, email, and AI experiences.
• Make sure every digital asset is easy to find, properly licensed, and audit-ready, reducing legal and regulatory exposure across all four operating states.
• Establish guardrails that let teams safely use AI-generated content while preserving brand integrity and a verifiable record of what is real, especially during emergency communications.
• Speed up creative production cycles by replacing ad hoc handoffs with shared models, clear approval paths, and self-service access to approved assets.
• Drive measurable adoption of the new content platform across business units, with clear KPIs for reuse, findability, and time saved.

Essential Responsibilities

• Design and govern AEM content models (Content Fragment Models, Editable Templates, Core Components, and Edge Delivery Services blocks) and the headless delivery standards that go with them, including GraphQL queries, Content Fragment APIs, persisted queries, and caching strategy. One source of truth, every channel.
• Own the composable-content strategy: structured content that decouples authoring from delivery and supports an instant Dark Sky Emergency Response pivot without code deployment.
• Own AEM Assets as the enterprise DAM end-to-end: metadata schemas, Smart Tags, taxonomy, folder architecture, collections, and the full asset lifecycle from single- and bulk-ingestion through versioning, expiration, takedown, and archival.
• Govern asset rights, licensing, and DRM, including talent rights, geographic restrictions, license windows and embargoes, watermarking, and immutable audit logs. Stand up and enforce C2PA content credentials and provenance for AI-generated creative, especially safety-critical media for outage, restoration, and hazard scenarios.
• Model structured content for dynamic energy-data surfaces (bills, usage, outage status, program eligibility) so the same content powers web, mobile, email, and AI experiences without rework.
• Design and operate approval and review workflow orchestration in AEM and Workfront, including multistep approvals, conditional routing, and regulatory, legal, and brand review gates with automated status tracking from draft through archive.
• Own API-first interoperability across the martech and enterprise stack, including CMS, PIM, MAP, CDP, AEP, creative tools, and CDNs, so assets, metadata, and performance signals flow bidirectionally across the ecosystem.
• Establish a granular permissions and access model and stand up a cross-functional governance forum (brand, legal, compliance, IT, product, and business-unit representatives) that reviews proposed model and taxonomy changes for reuse, state-level adaptation, accessibility, and regulatory archival before approval.
• Partner with the AEP Data Engineer on XDM content schemas and content-event instrumentation, with Content Strategy on upstream taxonomy, and with Creative Ops on asset intake.
• Drive adoption across business units through ongoing user training, enablement, and change-management programming, and keep the system trustworthy through periodic data-hygiene audits, metadata gap remediation, source-system mapping, and continuous quality-improvement cycles.
• Define and report DAM and content-architecture KPIs (time-to-find, asset reuse rate, compliance incidents, license-expiration exposure, adoption rates, search effectiveness, and integration health) and feed performance insights back to content, creative, and business teams.
• Manage DAM and content-platform vendor relationships: evaluate API-first design, GenAI governance, DRM, and compliance capabilities; review roadmaps against utility-specific needs; and track total cost of ownership.
• Core tools and platforms: AEM Sites + Assets + Guides; Edge Delivery Services; AEM Headless (Content Fragment Models, GraphQL); Adobe GenStudio and Firefly Services (for AI-generated asset ingestion + provenance); Workfront; taxonomy/ontology tools (Pool Party, Mondeca where used).

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in communications, marketing, journalism, public relations or related field or equivalent combination of education and experience. Advanced degree preferred.
• At least 10 years related experience in corporate or agency setting with demonstrated leadership in strategic planning and execution.
• Ability to prioritize, manage and work on multiple projects.
• Experience in communications with demonstrated ability to deliver effective and strategic messages to audiences ranging from front line employees to senior executives.
• Experience leveraging technology.
• Demonstrated leadership capabilities in project management.
• Demonstrated ability to meet business and financial objectives.

Preferred Requirements

• Adobe Certified Expert AEM Sites Architect or AEM Assets.
• Experience with Edge Delivery Services document-model authoring.
• DITA / AEM Guides experience for technical-content architectures.
• Experience deploying C2PA / content-credential workflows for AI-generated media.
• Multi-state / multi-brand content architecture experience.
• Utility or regulated-industry content governance background.

As a leading combination electricity and natural gas energy company, Xcel Energy offers a comprehensive portfolio of energy-related products and services to 3.4 million electricity and 1.9 million natural gas customers across eight Western and Midwestern states. At Xcel Energy, we strive to be the preferred and trusted provider of the energy our customers need. If you’re ready to be a part of something big, we invite you to join our team.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.

Individuals with a disability who need an accommodation to apply please contact us at recruiting@xcelenergy.com.

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 Reimbursement Account, Health Care Reimbursement 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: 07/02/26

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ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT

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