Product Lead Control Center Solutions (Brussels, BRU, BE, 1000)

Function

Elia plays a leading role in developing electricity markets, furthering access to these and establishing ancillary services, thereby ensuring grid security, efficiency and reliability. As Belgium's transmission system operator, Elia is at the forefront of the energy transition — integrating massive volumes of renewable energy sources, enabling the electrification of industrial processes, and designing the flexibility solutions that will allow society to reach a techno-economic optimum.

Within Elia, the Control Center Solutions (CCS) department is responsible for products that support all capabilities needed to ensure performant and reliable Operation of the Grid and Market in the control room of both regional and national control centers.  This includes also the needed evolutions of the operational tools accordingly to market design evolutions (balancing, congestion & flexibility management, voltage management,  ..) in Belgium and at Regional level.  More specifically, the CCS department is focusing on solutions that aim at enhancing the journey of our planning engineers & operators (Close-to-real time, system and market engineers), enabling innovation and taking into account their operational challenges.

About the role

As a Product Lead at CCS, you are at the heart of how we develop the solutions for the control room 2.0 and “keep the light’s on” while coping with all challenges linked to Energy transition and increasing complexity of grid and market Operation. You will own one of our product lines — leading its vision, guiding its strategy, and ensuring it delivers real value to our operators and planning engineers, while facilitating market design evolutions with measurable impact to Elia and the society.

This role is about making the right choices, aligning teams around what matters most, and building the conditions for your product teams to thrive. You will report to the Head of Product Cluster CCS, working alongside other Product Leads, Chapter Leads (Design, data, Engineering…), and Operational team Leads to set the direction for your product line.

Your mission

You are responsible for the strategic success of your product line — ensuring the good balance between developing (BUILD) new capabilities to create added value for NCC/RCC customers, while ensuring a high SLA and reliable behavior (RUN) of your digital solutions mostly considered as “Mission Critical” (e.G running 24X7).   

• Ensuring your product line has a clear, insight-driven strategy and a roadmap aligned with ELIAs strategy, ambitions of your operational customers (NCC/RCC) and roadmap of market design evolutions defined in SCS & MES departments.
• Empowering product teams to work on the most valuable problems (BUILD & RUN), with the context, autonomy, and support they need.
• Acting as the strategic bridge between product teams, other managers of product lines/Clusters, operational team managers, senior leadership and other stakeholders (IT, Controlling,..) — making sure everyone is aligned and informed

What you'll do

Strategy, roadmap and portfolio management

• Define and continuously refine the product line vision and strategy in alignment with CCS, SCS & MES strategy and Operational team ambitions at NCC/RCC.
• Set and maintain the roadmap: manage a living roadmap that reflects shifting priorities, driven based on customer impact, feasibility and product line resources & budget realities you are responsible for.
• Be accountable for the realization of your own portfolio of initiatives (led by your product owners) and align yourself with other Product line managers (within CCS or others) in case of mutual contributions linked to transversal initiatives and/or market design evolutions (e.g SCS/MES).
• Act as the ultimate accountable owner for your product line's budget, resources, objectives and achievements.

Execution

• Lead the key ceremonies for your product line: product weeklies, roadmap reviews, insights reviews, and stakeholder touchpoints
• Enable continuous discovery and delivery — ensuring teams talk regularly to customers, run structured experiments, and remove blockers
• Represent the product line to senior leadership; serve as the primary point of escalation for your product line decisions, also with regards to other departments/Stakeholders
• Foster alignment with departments in charge of operations, to capture their needs and to enable a feedback loop from actual operations, to ensure that the solutions of your line are continuously improved
• Ensure close alignment with Business Process Managers team at NCC to leverage their knowledge of our operators to shape the priorities, the design and operationalization of the solutions.
• Collaborate closely with other Product Leads (within CCS or others) to manage cross-product-line dependencies and maintain portfolio coherence

People & Governance

• Coach and develop your team of Product Owners across the six core competencies: Strategy, Discovery, Delivery, Marketing, Analytics, and Leadership. As middle manager at ELIA, ensure close follow-up with CMS HR business partner for your team (e.g Mid-year/Performance management/hiring process,  ..).
• Support your Product Owners with the staffing of their product teams from chapters, and ensure regular follow-up with Chapter leads (e.g escalation, operational feed-back,..)
• Supported by transformation team (SITO, Strategy , Agile coaches,..), define clear roles, responsibilities, and necessary governance (processes, way of working, supporting tools,..) for your product owners and their teams. Ensure effective product governance across the full lifecycle — from innovation and discovery through to in-life management and retirement
• Set measurable KPIs for product success and team performance;

Internal stakeholder engagement

• You are leading the internal stakeholder engagement for the products  developed in your line and ensure  interactions with Operational teams managers (NCC/RCC, NCC Business Process Managers), other Product Line managers (CCS , MES/SCS, GS,..),  IT team managers and other Corporate departments (Controlling, HR,..).

Your Profile

Product management :

• 5+ years of product or program management linked to Digital Solutions delivery for operational teams, with a proven track record at a senior or lead level
• Strong experience owning a product line or Digital Solutions segment end-to-end (Build & Run), ideally in an energy, utility, or regulated infrastructure context. Experience with “Mission Critical” Digital solutions in a 24X7 operational environment is a +.
• Ability to define and communicate a compelling product / program vision and translate it into an insight-driven, customer-focused strategy
• Experience managing a portfolio of products or projects and making prioritization decisions based on business value, customer impact, and feasibility
• Strong analytical and data-driven approach — comfortable setting OKRs, tracking product KPIs, and making decisions grounded in evidence
• Fluency in agile product operating models; experience working in multi-disciplinary teams (Product, Engineering, Design, Data)

Leadership and communication

• Experience as Team lead, managing up to 5 direct reports (e.g coaching on a daily basis, skills developments, performance management,)
• Excellent stakeholder management skills — able to navigate complex landscapes and requiring many transversal alignments: Operational/customers teams, departments facing with external customers (e.g market parties,..) , IT department, Business analysts & experts teams,  executive leadership, corporate departments (HR, Controlling, ...).
• A coaching mindset: you build maturity in the people around you, not just the product.
• High emotional intelligence; able to resolve conflicts, build trust, and align teams through influence rather than authority

Content knowledge

• Knowledge of energy market structures and grid/market operations principles.
• Power system expertise is a +.

Languages

• Professional proficiency in English, French and Dutch is essential

Offer

• Salary: a competitive salary package, allowance for representation expenses, year-end bonus, double vacation pay, meal vouchers (€10 per working day), eco-vouchers, sport & culture vouchers, bonuses based on individual and group results.
• Insurance: group insurance, hospitalisation insurance, ambulant care insurance for the whole family and also personal accident insurance.
• Vacation: You will be entitled to 20 vacation days and 5 additional vacation days, 6 local days, 4 exempt days (after 1 year of employment) and up to 5 long-service days (1 day for every 3 years in employment).
• Social fund: Year-end vouchers, birth and marriage allowance. We will also cover part of the cost of glasses, a dental prosthesis or similar needs.
• Communication: you will be given an iPhone, a phone subscription (for work and private use) and a laptop with internet reimbursement.
• Discounts: you will enjoy a 30% discount on your gas and electricity bill.
• Mobility: we will offer you a company car and public transport or a mobility budget.
• Elia shares: Elia will give you the opportunity to subscribe to shares with a discount of 16.66% on the average share price.

Location