Director, Grid Connections

Role overview & purpose

Your key responsibility is to lead the delivery of the Self-Service Grid Connection Toolkit project (the Project), which was awarded to Zepben under the Australian Government’s Grid Enhancing Technology (GET) Grant. Successfully delivering the Project will validate product-market fit and champion the Neara connection solution, creating demand amongst Australian utilities, governments and government agencies seeking faster, more transparent resolutions for connection enquiries.

The Director, Grid Connections, is responsible for driving the overall success of the Project. You will provide hands-on commercial, product, delivery and customer leadership, manage the Customer Success engineers assigned to the Project, and ensure engineering receives timely requirements, customer feedback and product input.

A Delivery Lead (Project Manager) will report to the Director, Grid Connections, and manage the day-to-day timeline and deployment of the Project, holding the engineering team accountable for agreed commitments, and producing all project reporting. Key issues and strategic decisions will be escalated to the Director, Grid Connections.

What you’ll do:

• Overall Project accountability. Own project outcomes and make time, cost and product trade-offs using the Delivery Lead’s forecasts and risk assessments. Decide priorities and recovery actions, and show leadership and initiative by independently approving material project decisions within delegated authority.
• Customer Success engineering management. Manage the Customer Success engineers assigned to the Project, setting priorities, coordinating workload and coaching delivery. Ensure the team carries out detailed customer discovery, requirements, testing and deployment work, with clear outputs and timely input to the broader engineering team.
• Product priorities and market fit. In collaboration with Neara’s Product Director, Chief Product Officer and Chief Strategy Officer, define an efficient, scalable product expansion to capture value for global utilities. Ensure T/DNSP and external-user workflows become actionable requirements and acceptance criteria. Use prototypes, demonstrations and pilot feedback to validate product fit, resolve conflicting needs and guide engineering trade-offs.
• Partner readiness and customer decisions. Lead GET partner relationships to secure data, workflow input, customer decisions and testing participation. Resolve substantive customer issues and senior stakeholder blockers, supported by the Delivery Lead’s tracking of commitments and dependencies.
• GET deployment and acceptance. Own GET customer readiness and acceptance outcomes. Direct Customer Success engineers on onboarding, integration coordination and customer testing, working with Engineering on technical readiness and the Delivery Lead on deployment scheduling and dependencies.
• Product championing and government expansion. Explain the product's capabilities and value through technical workshops, demonstrations and customer discussions (including potential customers such as governments and government agencies). Build interest with T/DNSPs and external users, relay opportunities to AU Sales, and provide product and technical input to future scaling plans.
• Benefits evidence and industry contribution. Own the evidence of product benefits, including connection-processing time, engineering effort, application quality and customer experience. Supply verified findings and approve substantive content for reporting and globally applicable case studies.