Manager, Load Forecasting

Job Summary

The Manager, Load Forecasting is a key leadership role within the Forecasting and Analytics team in the Planning and Regulatory Support organization. This role leads the team responsible for Southern Company’s official short- and long-term energy, peak demand, and revenue forecasts for the retail electric operating companies, including organic load growth and large-load segments.

The position serves as the Director of Forecasting and Analytics’ primary forecasting deputy, or knowledge lieutenant, ensuring that forecasting methods, assumptions, outputs, documentation, and explanations are analytically sound, transparent, repeatable, and defensible for planning, financial, executive, and regulatory uses. The role supports the Director in major regulatory proceedings and may serve as a company witness in smaller or targeted proceedings as appropriate.

This leader manages team leads and technical professionals, develops forecasting talent and future leaders, and coordinates across operating companies and enterprise functions. The role is accountable for crafting the annual forecasting and planning cycle while ensuring that monthly and quarterly economic monitoring and sales variance explanations remain aligned with the annual forecast models and assumptions without pulling the forecasting team into recurring short-cycle reporting ownership.

The ideal candidate combines analytical and statistical capability, utility planning knowledge, disciplined model governance, regulatory judgment, executive communication skills, intellectual curiosity, and a demonstrated ability to develop people. The role should be viewed as a development platform for broader enterprise forecasting, analytics, and regulatory leadership.

Job Requirements

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, Economics, Analytics, Finance, Engineering, Mathematics, Decision Sciences, Data Science, or a complementary discipline required.

• Master’s degree, Ph.D., or other advanced technical or business degree preferred.

Experience and Knowledge

• Minimum 7 years of experience in utility planning, forecasting, analytics, economics, finance, regulatory support, engineering, consulting, or related functions is required.

• Demonstrated experience leading technical professionals, senior analysts, team leads, or cross-functional analytical workstreams. Experience managing managers or team leads preferred.

• Strong understanding of forecasting, statistics, econometrics, customer usage analysis, economic drivers, planning processes, or comparable analytical disciplines.

• Utility experience strongly preferred, including exposure to load forecasting, integrated resource planning, financial planning, rate cases, regulatory filings, load research, pricing, demand-side management, large-load analysis, or system planning.

• Experience supporting regulatory filings, discovery responses, technical conferences, witness preparation, or testimony preferred. Prior witness experience is a differentiator, not an absolute requirement.

• Experience developing, improving, documenting, validating, benchmarking, and defending analytical models, assumptions, tools, and results

• Strong MS Office skills (Powerpoint, Excel, Word) is required.

Major Job Responsibilities

1. Lead the Annual Forecasting and Planning Cadence

• Lead completion of official energy, peak demand, and revenue forecasts for Southern Company and its retail electric operating companies.

• Own the annual forecasting process that supports resource planning, financial planning, capital planning, budgets, IRP and rate case inputs, and executive decision-making.

• Coordinate timelines, assumptions, deliverables, and stakeholder review points to ensure forecast outputs are accurate, timely and transparent to support the Company planning processes.

2. Govern Forecasting Methodologies, Models, Tools, and Assumptions

• Oversee development, improvement, documentation, benchmarking, validation, and implementation of forecasting models, statistical methods, tools, and assumptions.

• Ensure forecast methodologies can withstand internal review, regulatory challenge, and external stakeholder scrutiny.

• Promote practical use of econometric, statistical, machine-learning, data visualization, and business intelligence tools where those tools improve forecast accuracy, transparency, or decision usefulness.

3. Serve as the Director’s Forecasting Designated Backup in Regulatory Proceedings

• Support the Director of Forecasting and Analytics as the primary backup on forecasting matters in regulatory proceedings.

• Prepare, review, and coordinate forecasting analysis supporting testimony, discovery responses, technical conferences, regulatory filings, and stakeholder engagement.

• Help defend forecasting methodologies, assumptions, sensitivities, and results in internal and external forums.

• Serve as a company witness in smaller or targeted proceedings when appropriate, and develop the team’s future witness capability.

4. Create Forecasting Insights for Enterprise Decision-Making

• Synthesize complex load, customer, economic, weather, large-load, technology, and business driver information into clear planning implications.

• Communicate forecasting results, uncertainty, sensitivities, risks, and business impacts to technical and non-technical audiences.

• Engage with operating company counterparts, System Planning, Finance, Regulatory, Pricing, Economic Analysis, Energy Efficiency, Load Research, Demand Planning, and senior leadership.

• Support executive communication regarding forecast accuracy, marketplace trends, large-load developments, planning sensitivities, and implications for revenue and capital planning.

5. Coordinate with Sales and Economic Analysis on Monthly and Quarterly Cadences

• Partner with the Sales and Economic Analysis Manager to ensure monthly and quarterly sales monitoring, economic analysis, and variance explanations are consistent with the official annual forecast, model structure, and planning assumptions.

• Provide forecast context, methodological interpretation, and annual-cycle assumptions to support recurring variance narratives without assigning recurring monthly and quarterly reporting ownership to the forecasting team.

• Establish collaboration routines so economic monitoring and variance explanations inform the next forecast cycle, while preserving forecasting team capacity for model development, annual forecast delivery, large-load analysis, and regulatory support.

6. Lead Scenario, Sensitivity, and Emerging Load Analysis

• Lead analytical approaches for uncertainty related to large loads, data center and industrial growth, economic changes, electrification, distributed energy resources, customer-sited generation, load flexibility, weather trends, and changing customer usage patterns.

• Develop scenario and sensitivity frameworks that support planning trade-offs, executive decisions, and regulatory strategy.

• Ensure assumptions for emerging load issues are documented, explainable, and aligned with enterprise planning needs.

7. Develop Team Leads, Technical Talent, and Succession Readiness

• Lead team leads and highly technical forecasting professionals through clear expectations, coaching, delegation, accountability, and development planning.

• Develop team leads as accountable owners of forecasting workstreams, including technical judgment, stakeholder engagement, documentation, presentation skills, and succession readiness.

• Foster a culture of curiosity, exploration, discipline, collaboration, inclusion, transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.

8. Manage the Forecasting Work Portfolio and Cross-System Delivery

• Prioritize competing work requests, align resources to deadlines, negotiate deliverable scope when needed, and maintain quality under planning and regulatory time constraints.

• Coordinate with operating company counterparts and enterprise stakeholders to sustain a shared-service delivery model in a hybrid work environment.

• Escalate risks, resource constraints, methodological issues, and stakeholder alignment concerns to the Director when appropriate.

Skills and Attributes

• Strong analytical and statistical judgment, including the ability to distinguish signal from noise and convert uncertain information into practical planning frameworks.

• Excellent written, oral, and visual communication skills, with the ability to explain complex forecasting concepts to executives, technical experts, regulatory audiences, and non-technical stakeholders.

• Ability to influence without direct authority across operating companies, functional teams, and enterprise planning processes.

• Strong project, portfolio, and deadline management skills, including the ability to prioritize competing work and protect team capacity.

• Demonstrated people-development capability, including coaching, delegation, feedback, accountability, succession planning, and development of future leaders.

• Working knowledge of forecasting, econometric, statistical, data analytics, or visualization applications such as EViews, SAS, Python, R, SQL, Power BI, Excel, or comparable tools.

• Intellectual curiosity, exploration, disciplined execution, independent thinking, sound judgment, humility, and willingness to improve methods and challenge assumptions.

• Demonstrated commitment to Southern Company values, including Safety First, Unquestionable Trust, Superior Performance, and Total Commitment.

Success Profile

• Protects the integrity, transparency, and usefulness of official forecasts while evolving methods for a changing load environment.

• Builds trusted relationships with operating companies, System Planning, Finance, Regulatory, Pricing, Economic Analysis, Load Research, Demand Planning, and senior leadership.

• Develops team leads into credible forecasting workstream owners and future manager candidates.

• Strengthens regulatory readiness by building a clear analytical record and preparing the organization to defend forecast methods and assumptions.

• Maintains a disciplined annual forecasting cadence while supporting alignment with monthly and quarterly sales and economic analysis.