Operations Manager, Iberia

Join us to create maximum climate impact and financial returns

Bright Sunday is a cleantech investment company on a mission to cut CO₂ emissions by making the cleantech transformation easy and profitable for commercial and industrial customers. 

Our core business is to offer commercial and industrial customers self-consumption solar PV systems with zero upfront investments and savings from day one (so-called Power Purchasing Agreements, PPAs). As a complement to the PPAs we also offer leasing of ancillary services such as electric vehicle chargers, energy storage and heat pumps. Currently Bright Sunday owns and operates a portfolio of approximately 70 solar PV systems in Spain and Portugal with a total effect of more than 20 MW.

In general we work extensively with external partners and to secure both quality and cost-efficient scale-up we strive for a high degree of automation in all business areas. To deliver our projects and services we partner with local installers (“EPCs”) – we buy all systems turn-key at a fixed price and the EPC takes care of engineering, procurement and construction. When the system is live we engage external partners for maintenance, service and cleaning.

Bright Sunday, founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden, is financially backed by Niam Infra Fund, an infrastructure fund that has the European Investment Fund as one of its main investors. We’re currently on a European scale-up journey – in the coming five years we will continue the market expansion and build a leading pan-European cleantech investment company with a +150 MW self-consumption project portfolio. The company is highly dynamic with a small and highly skilled team.

We are now looking for a new Operations Manager for Iberia. The Operations team is organized together with Sales. You will be based in Madrid and report directly to Daniel Nilsson, Chief Sales Executive who is based in Alicante. 

Responsibilities

Background and context

The Key Account Managers negotiate the terms of the PPA and the EPC contracts and take the overall responsibility for the long-term commercial relationships. Once the contracts are signed the Operations Manager takes charge for delivering an outstanding EPC partner and customer experience during the construction phase. 

All systems are built with the same type of logger and energy meter and have a dedicated mobile VPN connection. This setup allows us to monitor all systems in real time in a unified way in one single monitoring platform. The Project Engineers, also part of the Operations team, take care of construction supervision, on-site inspections, running customer and EPC communication and manage the process of onboarding new PV systems into the operations platform. 

Once the PV system is live and up and running in the monitoring system you are responsible for performance monitoring and execution of maintenance, service and cleaning. You are responsible for setting the priorities for on-site issue analysis (done by the Project Engineers) and external service, maintenance and cleaning partners (i.e. what projects to focus on in what order). 

Scope of responsibilities

Project management | project office

• Pre-sales and introduction of new EPC partners
  • Support sales in key Host meetings (as needed)
  • Introduction to EPCs: project process and technical guidelines
• Project management
  • Project planning: health & safety, kick-off, COD celebration, etc
  • EPC contracts management: “installation notice” preparations (permits, licenses, etc) | milestone verifications | project legalization
  • EPC issues and disputes: manage out of the ordinary situations e.g. major project or technical incidents, EPC conflicts / disputes, etc
• Project office
  • Portfolio reporting
  • Project process development (Bright Sunday blueprint)

System performance management

• Portfolio performance analysis and reporting
  • Analyze what issues are most common and costliest
  • Prioritize, drive and follow-up general performance improvement activities
  • Manage performance reporting (Host, EPC partner and internal)
• Real-time monitoring and service dispatch
  • Define and develop the alarms and ticket work process
  • Analyze alarms, assign tickets with a defined level of urgency to Bright Sunday staff / external partners and follow-up on progress

Service & maintenance development

• Partnerships – develop external partnerships for Operations e.g. H&S, inspections, cleaning, service and maintenance and additional works
• S&M process development – tools, routines, etc (Bright Sunday blueprint)

Qualifications and personal characteristics

Professional qualifications

• M.Sc. in e.g Electrical Engineering, Computer Sciences, Industrial Engineering and Management or Business Administration and Economics 
• 5-10 years relevant postgraduate experience from e.g. management consulting, solar PV or the construction industry
• Experience from solar PV O&M is very meritorious (almost a must)
• Experience from managing complex projects and contracts is meritorious

Personal characteristics

• Analytical capability and technical interest is a must
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to inspire trust and to build strong interpersonal relations
• Team mindset, high self-motivation and can-do attitude
• Vision, ambition and structure to develop the Bright Sunday operations blueprint

Language requirements

Full working proficiency in Spanish and Portuguese and basic conversational skills in English (company language). If you also speak other languages it is meritorious.

Compensation

Individual fixed salary. State your current fixed total annual compensation plus bonus scheme, if relevant, and your compensation claim in your application.

Place of work

Madrid, Spain (Impact Hub Madrid – Barceló).

Application and process ahead

For this recruitment we cooperate with Catenon (www.catenon.com) and in order to fill the position as fast as possible we will continuously assess candidates. 

For questions or to apply to the position contact:

Carlota Perez Marina, Senior Executive Manager Energía, Catenon cperez@catenon.com
+34 630 949 626.