Asset Operations Manager (BESS)

Equis Australia Management; Melbourne; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

GPE seeks an experienced Asset Operations Manager to lead the operational management of our Australian Battery Energy Storage System portfolio. The role is an owner-side leadership position ensuring safety, reliability, compliance and commercial optimisation throughout asset life.

Senior oversight extends to O&M contractors, OEMs, LTSAs, outages, lifecycle planning, risk and governance. This role will shape a scalable operating model and inform longer-term strategic direction.

Qualifications

• Significant experience in asset operations within BESS or similar energy infra.
• Experience administering O&M contracts and OEM service agreements.
• Sound commercial and contractual judgement for owner-side decisions.
• Knowledge of regulatory reporting interfaces and compliance frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Lead operational management of a growing BESS portfolio.
• Oversight of asset performance, outages, lifecycle planning and budgets.
• Coordinate with O&M contractors, OEMs and service agreements.
• Develop scalable Asset Operations model and strategy for the portfolio.

Skills

Asset operations

O&M contracts

Commercial judgement

KPI management

Regulatory reporting

Outages management

Stakeholder management

Risk management

Contractor oversight

NEM/NER knowledge

Education

Engineering degree

Asset-management qualification

Job description

About the Role
GPE is seeking an experienced Asset Operations Manager to lead the operational management of our growing Australian Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) portfolio.
This is a senior owner-side role responsible for ensuring our operating assets are safe, reliable, compliant and commercially optimised throughout their operational life.
The role will provide portfolio-level oversight of asset performance, O&M contractors, OEMs and Long-Term Service Agreements (LTSAs), operational expenditure, outages, lifecycle planning, risk and operational governance.
Importantly, this is not a hands-on engineering or maintenance management position. The Asset Operations Manager will be supported by contracted site teams, technical specialists and dedicated engineering capability. The role is responsible for ensuring those parties perform, challenging them where required, protecting GPE's contractual and commercial position, and making informed owner-side decisions.
As our BESS portfolio continues to grow, the successful candidate will also play an important role in developing a scalable Asset Operations model and shaping our longer-term operational and internalisation strategy.

Job Requirements

About You
You will bring significant experience in asset operations, asset management or operational management within BESS, renewable energy, power generation or major electrical infrastructure.

You will ideally have:

• demonstrated experience managing large-scale operational energy or infrastructure assets;
• strong experience administering O&M contracts and/or OEM service agreements;
• sound commercial and contractual judgement;
• working knowledge of operational compliance frameworks, including NER obligations and SOCI/CIRMP requirements, with the ability to govern specialist delivery and regulatory reporting interfaces;
• experience managing asset-performance KPIs, operational budgets and contractor performance;
• experience working with electricity Trading teams on availability, outages, dispatch constraints and operational reporting;
• experience with warranty, defect and lifecycle management;
• a strong understanding of HV electrical infrastructure and operational safety frameworks;
• sufficient technical capability to interrogate asset-performance information and effectively challenge contractors, OEMs and engineering specialists;
• strong risk-management and operational-governance capability;
• experience coordinating planned and unplanned outages;
• excellent stakeholder-management skills across technical, commercial and executive interfaces;
• the ability to translate complex operational issues into clear recommendations and decisions for senior management;
• working knowledge of NEM operations, including dispatch, bidding and rebidding, FCAS and AEMO requirements, sufficient to understand how availability and outages affect market outcomes; and
• the ability to make fast, commercially informed decisions with incomplete information, including under on-call conditions.

Experience operating utility-scale BESS assets within the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) will be highly regarded.

An engineering, technical, commercial or asset-management qualification is desirable; however, we are principally seeking someone with the operational leadership, commercial capability and judgement required to manage a significant and growing asset portfolio.

Leadership Profile

This role will suit someone who thinks and acts like an asset owner.