Product Manager Connection Methodology

Function

About Elia

Elia develops the electricity grid, the electricity markets, facilitates access to them and establishes ancillary services to ensure a secure, efficient and reliable electricity system. As Belgium’s transmission system operator, Elia is at the forefront of the energy transition: integrating large volumes of renewable energy, enabling electrification of our society, connecting new technologies and designing flexibility solutions that deliver the best outcomes for society.

Within Elia, the System & Client Solutions (SCS) department is responsible for products that make this vision a reality. We design and implement the solutions needed to support the Belgian grid — from enabling both TSO and DSO grid user connections within a context of growing congestion, to developing the ancillary services that ensure system security as the energy landscape transforms. We serve customers, partners, and market parties across Belgium.

About the role

As a product manager, you are responsible for the business solutions within your scope: ensuring that customer and system needs, operational realities, regulatory and legal requirements as well as digital capabilities are translated into coherent and effective solutions.

You report to a Product Lead within SCS and work closely with Product Owners and domain experts. Through regular engagement with internal and external customers and stakeholders, you shape the direction of your solutions and build alignment across Customers, Operations, IT, Regulatory Affairs and other relevant stakeholders.

Context

The growth of battery storage and data centers, combined with the broader electrification of industry and households, is driving connection requests far beyond the grid capacity anticipated in current grid-development plans. As a result, new connections may be subject to temporary flexibility requirements until the necessary grid reinforcements are completed. Within this context, the applied methodologies and assumptions for grid connection should be closely monitored and adapted where necessary, to ensure a good trade-off between managing operational risks for Elia and providing grid users with a fair level of grid access. Moreover, candidate Grid Users request greater transparency into the applied methodologies and assumptions behind these flexibility requirements. In response, Elia published its grid connection methodology for the first time.

To help Grid Users identify the most viable connection opportunities, Elia published a hosting-capacity map. Stakeholders now expect greater transparency about the assumptions underpinning its calculations.

Your role

As Product Manager Connection Methodology, the problem you own is to balance Elia’s operational risks with the flexibility constraints imposed on Grid Users. You provide stakeholders with clear, accessible explanations of the assumptions underpinning these methodologies. You continuously improve the methodologies by responding to changing behaviours, exploring technological and economical opportunities and testing the accuracy of key assumptions. You also integrate broader evolutions that are developed in other product lines into the connection methodologies, such as changes to flexibility products and the implementation of a TOTEX framework. You balance the interests of Grid Users with the broader societal and system impact. You benchmark our approach against those of other TSOs.

You lead stakeholder engagement and work with regulatory authorities to secure the necessary approvals. In partnership with operational departments, you define the strategy, implement the methodologies, ensure that their assumptions adequately reflect operational risks and align with other methodologies (such as the grid development methodologies). You incorporate feedback from Grid Users to identify improvements and coordinate with distribution system operators to ensure a consistent approach to joint calculations.

Your responsibilities

As Product Manager, you are accountable for the customer problem, the solution design, its implementation, and the business outcomes it delivers. You own your product scope end-to-end, from discovery and problem framing through to adoption, evolution or retirement.

You engage with customers, operations teams, market participants, regulators and internal stakeholders to understand their needs, test assumptions and prioritise opportunities. You make transparent, evidence-based trade-offs between customer value, operational feasibility, regulatory requirements and the wider interests of the electricity system.

You define the end-to-end business solution within your scope, including its regulatory framework, processes, rules, incentives and supporting digital capabilities. As the reference point for your domain, you maintain a holistic view of the solution and bring together the expertise needed to develop it. You also contribute your own expertise through design notes and regulatory documents.

You translate strategic objectives into a clear product vision, measurable outcomes and a prioritised roadmap. Working closely with Product Owners in charge of the implementation and with the delivery teams, you ensure that solutions are feasible, deliver value and address the underlying customer problem.

You build trusted partnerships across Elia and with external stakeholders, including regulatory authorities. You align stakeholders around shared outcomes, manage dependencies and resolve obstacles that could delay delivery.

To succeed in this role, you combine strategic and analytical thinking with sound, evidence-based judgement. You keep customer needs at the centre of decision-making and build alignment across complex stakeholder groups through influence rather than formal authority.

Your Profile

• A university degree in Engineering.
• At least five years of experience in product management, market design, regulatory design, or a comparable role, with a proven ability to take ownership of complex challenges from concept through implementation.
• The ability to operate effectively in a new role and within an evolving organisational environment, where roles, responsibilities and decision-making boundaries will gradually take shape and become clearer over time.
• Demonstrated experience in owning and evolving regulatory or market frameworks, including direct collaboration with regulators or comparable external authorities.
• Experience thriving in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment, where you can effectively navigate diverse perspectives and drive alignment.
• Prior experience with grid planning activities is a strong asset and will help you quickly build impact in the role.
• Professional proficiency in English and in either Dutch or French, together with sufficient knowledge of the other language to use it in a professional context.

Offer

Location