The Head of Engineering leads the Engineering department, the company's centre of technical know-how in design, commissioning and service. The core competency of our commissioning engineers and service technicians is battery energy storage: batteries and inverters, including the overarching control logic. The department operates as a shared resource pool: it provides qualified engineers and technical expertise to the Delivery department, where project managers are responsible for project delivery, and to the Service department, where the Service Manager is responsible for service delivery and meeting service level agreements (SLAs). The Head of Engineering is responsible for the competencies, capacity, quality of work and technical standards of these resources.
Engineering is supported by the group Technology department, which develops the company's software (including the Podium EMS) and designs standardised BESS solutions; its hardware team holds group-level know-how in batteries and inverters. The Engineering department applies these standardised solutions in customer projects and feeds field experience back into their further development. You will work closely with the Managing Director, the Service Manager, the Head of Delivery, the Technology department and the Sales department to align engineering capacity and standards with the company's growth strategy.
Key responsibilities
Leadership and people management
- Lead, coach and develop engineers in the Engineering department across all three areas of competency (design, commissioning, service); oversee recruitment, onboarding, performance management, competency development and succession planning.
- Build a culture of personal accountability and engagement, and act as the guardian of the company's technical know-how.
- Plan department capacity against the combined demand of the project plan (Delivery) and service contracts (Service); allocate engineers to projects and service work in agreement with project managers and the Service Manager.
- Define and maintain clear rules of collaboration with the Delivery and Service departments: how resources are requested, prioritised and released, and who is responsible for what (Engineering = competencies, quality and capacity; Delivery/Service = execution, schedule and commercial outcomes).
- Resolve resource conflicts between projects and service, escalating trade-offs to the Managing Director where necessary; manage the department budget.
- Be accountable for the quality, standardisation and timeliness of electrical design documentation for BESS and EMS projects (single-line diagrams, protection and grid-connection design, LV/MV integration, as-built documentation).
- Ensure designs meet applicable standards, grid codes and safety legislation, and champion design-for-manufacture, design-for-installation and cost optimisation approaches.
- Own the commissioning methodology, checklists and safe working procedures used by engineers assigned to Delivery department projects; act as the main technical escalation point during commissioning and grid connection approval.
- Provide qualified service engineers and technical expertise to the Service Manager, who is responsible for service delivery, SLAs and customer commitments; ensure engineers assigned to service work operate to agreed standards.
- Be accountable for root cause analysis (RCA) of technical failures in the field, and feed lessons learned back into design and commissioning practice.
- Apply standardised BESS solutions designed by the Technology department in customer projects; ensure project-specific deviations are agreed with the Technology department and kept to a minimum.
- Channel structured field feedback (design, commissioning and service findings relating to batteries, inverters and EMS) back to the Technology department's hardware and software teams to improve the standard product.
- Coordinate training and knowledge transfer with the Technology department so that commissioning engineers and service technicians stay up to date on new product generations.
- Work with the Sales and Delivery departments on technical feasibility assessments, proposal reviews and realistic estimates of engineering work.
- Define and track engineering KPIs (design quality, first-time commissioning success rate, utilisation and availability of engineering resources) and continuously improve processes and tools.
