Director, Grid Connections

About the role

Neara uses machine learning to build digital twins of electricity grids, helping utilities understand risks and optimise investments. As Director, Grid Connections, you will lead the delivery of the Self-Service Grid Connection Toolkit project, awarded to Zepben under the Australian Government's Grid Enhancing Technology (GET) Grant. The role provides hands-on commercial, product, delivery and customer leadership, manages the Customer Success engineers assigned to the project and ensures engineering receives timely requirements and feedback.

Key responsibilities

• Own project outcomes and make time, cost and product trade-offs using the Delivery Lead's forecasts and risk assessments, and approve material decisions within delegated authority.
• Manage the Customer Success engineers, set priorities, coordinate workload and coach delivery, ensuring detailed customer discovery, requirements, testing and deployment work.
• Define an efficient, scalable product expansion with the Product Director, CPO and CSO, turning T/DNSP and external-user workflows into requirements and acceptance criteria, and validating product fit with prototypes, demos and pilots.
• Lead GET partner relationships to secure data, workflow input, customer decisions and testing participation, and resolve customer issues and stakeholder blockers.
• Own GET customer readiness and acceptance, directing onboarding, integration and testing and working with Engineering and the Delivery Lead on technical readiness and deployment.
• Champion the product through workshops, demonstrations and customer discussions, building interest with T/DNSPs and external users and relaying opportunities to AU Sales.
• Own evidence of product benefits (connection-processing time, engineering effort, application quality, customer experience) and approve content for reporting and case studies.

Required profile

• Substantial Australian electricity or energy-sector experience, with practical understanding of distribution network connections and customer workflows.
• Proven commercial leader able to commercialise and expand adoption of energy-sector technologies.
• Demonstrated project outcome leadership across customer, engineering and product teams, including trade-offs.
• Ability to turn customer discovery into prioritised requirements and acceptance criteria, and to explain technical value to senior stakeholders.
• Desirable: experience with DER integration, network planning, technical product commercialisation, government-funded projects or grid connection policy and reform.

Working relationships

• The Chief Product Officer sets overall platform direction; the Director decides priorities within it and escalates changes outside the project mandate.
• The Delivery Lead owns the daily schedule, dependencies, risk, cost tracking and reporting, including grant reporting.
• Engineering owns estimates, architecture, implementation and quality; the Director supplies priorities and customer decisions.
• Sales owns the pipeline and closing of opportunities; deployment and onboarding are limited to GET, then handed to Customer Success teams.

What we offer

• Competitive salary plus ESOP.
• Significant career development and global growth opportunities.