Operations Data Engineer: PI Systems & AI Pipelines

The Southern Company; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

The Southern Company is seeking an Operations Data Engineering Analyst to join the M&D Center. You will support PI/IP.21 historian environments and drive the data journey from raw sensor ingestion to AI-ready datasets for real-time monitoring and advanced analytics.

Collaborating with PI/IP.21 administrators, AI/ML analysts, and renewable operations, you will help deliver high-quality data, build dashboards, and enable downstream analytics across gas, solar, wind, and storage assets.

Qualifications

• PI System Hands-On: 2-3 years with AVEVA PI, AF, PI Vision, and interfaces/connectors.
• Python: Proficient in data extraction, transformation, and automation.
• SQL: Proficient in querying and data manipulation across relational DBs.
• Databricks: Familiar with ETL/ELT pipelines, Delta Lake, and feature stores.
• Data quality governance: Monitoring, validation, remediation, and surrogation.

Responsibilities

• Tag Management: create, modify, and decommission PI/IP.21 tags.
• AF Configuration: manage AF elements, attributes, templates, hierarchies.
• AF Analytics Deployment: develop and deploy AF Analytics in test/production.
• Data Quality Monitoring: monitor and remediate data quality issues.
• PI Vision Development: design and maintain real-time dashboards.
• Site Onboarding: integrate new sites into PI/IP.21 system.
• Data Query Support: enable self-service data access with PI DataLink, Python, SQL.
• Troubleshooting: diagnose data flow issues and escalate when needed.
• Dataset Curation: clean, deduplicate, align timestamps for AI-ready data in Databricks.
• ML data requirements engineering: translate model needs into data tasks.
• Model-ready validation: verify datasets against model inputs.
• Pipeline monitoring: ensure reliability and scalability of data pipelines.
• Collaboration: work with PI Admin, AI/ML team, engineers and plant personnel.
• Documentation: maintain configuration and SOP docs.
• Learning: stay current with PI, Databricks, AI/ML pipelines.

Skills

PI System

Python

SQL

Databricks

AF Analytics

PI Vision

Data Quality Monitoring

Power BI

Tableau

Education

Bachelor's degree in Engineering or related field

Master's degree in Engineering / Data Science or related field (preferred)

Tools

AVEVA PI System

AspenTech IP.21

PI DataLink

PI Web API

PI Connect

Databricks

Power BI

Job description

The Southern Company is seeking an Operations Data Engineering Analyst to join the M&D Center. You will support PI/IP.21 historian environments and drive the data journey from raw sensor ingestion to AI-ready datasets for real-time monitoring and advanced analytics.

Collaborating with PI/IP.21 administrators, AI/ML analysts, and renewable operations, you will help deliver high-quality data, build dashboards, and enable downstream analytics across gas, solar, wind, and storage assets.