Innnovation Business Development Lead

The opportunity

Hitachi Energy is seeking an Innovation Business Development Lead to join the Global Innovation Organization within the Transformers Business Unit. In this pivotal and influential role, you will drive the creation, validation, and scaling of transformative technology solutions that directly shape the future of our products, engineering capabilities, and digital innovation.

Acting as the strategic bridge between technology, business, and external ecosystems, you will lead high-value initiatives that leverage open innovation, advanced engineering tools, and cross-functional collaboration. Your mission is to turn emerging technologies into competitive advantages, starting with the opportunities identification and leading the process of roadmap execution, pilot validation, and global rollout.

This is an exceptional opportunity for a senior innovation leader for transforming innovation opportunities into validated business cases, strategic partnerships, pilot projects, and scalable growth opportunities. The role bridges technology, market needs, customers, and external ecosystems to ensure innovation delivers measurable business value. In this role you will drive customer discovery, market validation, partnership development, startup engagement, and commercialization activities from a disruptive perspective while collaborating closely with technology, product management, R&D, and business leadership.

How you'll make an impact

• Identify and evaluate emerging business opportunities, market trends, customer needs, and disruptive technologies.
• Translate market intelligence, competitor analysis, and ecosystem assessments, strategic priorities into innovation initiatives, pilots, and growth opportunities.
• Develop business cases and recommendations for investment decisions.
• Support innovation portfolio prioritization and roadmap development.
• Lead customer discovery activities and voice-of-customer programs.
• Validate use cases, value propositions, and market attractiveness.
• Identify, evaluate, and engage startups, scale-ups, universities, research institutes, and strategic partners.
• Provide strategic direction and hands-on leadership to ensure successful execution of global technology pilot projects and proof-of-concept initiatives with external partners on time, within budget, and to the highest quality standards.
• Support due diligence and partnership evaluations.
• Transform innovation concepts into scalable business opportunities.
• Develop go-to-market strategies for validated solutions together with internal and external stakeholders
• Support business models definition, value proposition, and market entry strategies.
• Build internal support for scaling successful pilots.
• Negotiate and manage collaboration opportunities/partnership alongside Legal and Procurement.
• Support the establishment of co-development, licensing, venture clienting, and partnership agreements.
• Develop and maintain strategic external relationships.
• Coordinate activities across R&D, product management, engineering, sales, marketing, sourcing, finance, and legal. Foster collaboration and alignment across global teams and stakeholders, ensuring seamless communication and issues resolution.
• Facilitate innovation workshops and business validation sessions, present recommendations to executive stakeholders.
• Cultivate strategic partnerships with global research institutions, industry stakeholders, and external collaborators to accelerate technological advancements.
• Champion innovation by promoting design thinking, entrepreneurship mindset, and the development of disruptive technologies within programs.
• Ensure compliance with governance frameworks, technical standards, and regulatory requirements while maintaining audit readiness.
• Monitor performance through KPIs and deliver data-driven insights to enable informed decision-making and continuous improvement.
• Proactively manage risks to safeguard innovation to ensure responsible innovation and our freedom to operate.

• Degree in Electrical, Mechanical, Industrial, or Computer Science Engineering or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of experience in the transformers industry, including leadership in a global environment.
• Demonstrated ability to translate market trends into strategic technology roadmaps.
• Strong strategic thinking, analytical skills, and a track record of driving measurable business impact.
• Experience converting insights into validated innovation solutions, with excellent communication and stakeholder-engagement capabilities.
• Proven expertise in project and portfolio management, budget management, and multi-region collaboration.

• We champion a culture of innovation, curiosity, and continuous learning-empowering every team member to make an impact.
• Our global environment opens doors to world-class experts, cross-functional collaboration, and transformative career growth.
• At Hitachi Energy, you can develop, lead, and shape sustainable technologies that power a stronger, smarter, and greener future.