R&D Product Owner – GPQSS Digital- IDC

The opportunity

We are looking for a proactive and customer-focused Product Owner for R&D Service & Digital Projects to drive the definition, delivery, and continuous improvement of service-related digital and technical solutions across tendering, engineering, service, and system design domains across multiple portfolios. The role acts as the key interface between business stakeholders, service organizations, engineering teams, customers, and development teams to ensure that products and solutions deliver measurable value across the lifecycle.
You will be part of GPQSS - Digital, working in a global, cross-functional environment and reporting to the relevant R&D leadership in Grid & Power Quality Solutions and Service. This is a visible role with strong influence on service innovation, operational excellence, engineering efficiency, tendering digitalization, system design tool enablement, and digital transformation at scale, living and exercising Hitachi Energy's core values of safety and integrity.

How you'll make an impact:

• You will own and manage the product backlog for digital solutions supporting tendering, engineering, service, and system design tools across multiple portfolios, translating business needs, customer requirements, tendering workflows, engineering inputs, and strategic objectives into clear, prioritized user stories and features.
• You will act as the project manager for relevant projects, working closely with global service organizations, tendering and engineering teams across portfolios, other R&D project managers, digital, quality, cybersecurity functions, and operations teams to ensure alignment between product vision, service delivery, engineering needs, and execution.
• You will be responsible for defining release plans for service, tendering, engineering, and digital solutions, ensuring value-driven prioritization and timely delivery.
• You will actively engage with stakeholders to gather, clarify, and validate requirements, balancing business value, technical feasibility, risk, and compliance considerations.
• You will support agile execution by participating in sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives, providing timely clarifications and acceptance of delivered functionality.
• You will ensure traceability of requirements, KPIs, and outcomes across the service lifecycle, including development, deployment, operation, and continuous improvement.
• You will proactively monitor progress, dependencies, and risks, and take corrective actions in collaboration with project managers and delivery teams when deviations occur.
• You will provide regular status updates on development activities to stakeholders and ensure they remain well‑informed.
• You will ensure the post‑release transition of the solution to the product team.
• You will be involved in developing and digitalizing the tendering process, requiring a strong understanding of tendering workflows, proposal preparation, requirement capture, engineering inputs, and handover expectations to ensure the digital solution supports real business needs.
• You will collaborate with engineering teams to enhance engineering and system design tools, supporting automation, configuration, design validation, integration readiness, and improved handover from tendering to execution.
• You will contribute to the definition and continuous improvement of service processes, tendering workflows, engineering execution practices, system design tool workflows, digital workflows, and project management practices across multiple portfolios to increase efficiency and scalability.

Your background:

• Bachelor's in EEE or ECE with a minimum of 12 years of experience.
• Relevant experience in software development or digital engineering projects.
• Strong understanding of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and engineering best practices, complemented by expertise in the electrical domain.
• Ability to work in an agile and collaborative team environment.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Good communication skills with the ability to interact with global stakeholders.
• Proven ability to take ownership and deliver tasks independently.
• You have experience working as a Product Owner, Consultant, Project Lead, or similar role within power systems, energy consulting, or technical services with a strong focus on development of digital solutions.
• Strong domain exposure to power systems, grid planning, power quality, renewables integration, industrial or utility consulting is highly valued.
• Experience working with and managing project lifecycles, including scoping, assumptions management, analysis, reporting, and customer sign-off.
• Technical literacy in software architectures, APIs, cloud platforms, data flows, security, and integration constraints, in supporting informed decision-making.
• Good understanding of agile or hybrid delivery models, with hands-on experience in backlog management, prioritization, and value-based decision making.
• Ability to translate complex technical and regulatory topics into clear, actionable requirements and deliverables.
• Experience collaborating with multi-disciplinary and geographically distributed teams, including consultants, engineers, and digital experts.
• Familiarity with standards, grid codes, regulatory frameworks, and customer compliance requirements relevant to power consulting.
• Strong analytical mindset, structured working approach, and comfort with documentation and traceability.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to engage both technical experts and non-technical customers.
• A strong sense of ownership, accountability, and customer focus, with the ability to influence without direct authority.
• Experience in using tools/applications such as Azure DevOps, Microsoft Office, and SAP for day‑to‑day activities.
• User testing experience and Scrum development team management is added advantage.