Customer & Market Innovation Expert

N-SIDE Belgium; Louvain-la-Neuve; Remote; EUR 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Company car

Benefits package

Job summary

N-SIDE in Louvain-la-Neuve is seeking a bright Customer & Market Innovation Expert to join our Innovation team. You will uncover opportunities at the intersection of industrial operations, energy, and technology, starting with heavy electricity consumers, and collaborate with the Innovation Lead and Innovation Developer to turn insights into experiments and viable propositions.

You will assess desirability, feasibility, and viability, translate insights into testable hypotheses, and help shape

Qualifications

• Significant experience in customer discovery, product, market development, innovation, consulting, or a related role.
• Deep knowledge of energy market dynamics and industrial consumer purchasing mechanics.
• Experience or connections with energy-intensive industries is a strong advantage.
• Strong product sense, customer empathy, and ability to distinguish important problems from interesting ones.
• Commercial judgment and understanding of buying dynamics, value creation, adoption barriers, and business-model viability.
• Enough technical fluency to collaborate credibly with engineers, AI specialists, energy experts, and customer technical teams.
• Comfortable challenging assumptions through customer engagement and experimentation.
• Able to build trusted relationships and align internal and external stakeholders.
• Autonomous, pragmatic, and comfortable operating in ambiguous and unfamiliar domains.
• Outcome-focused, measuring progress through learning, better decisions, and customer value rather than activity or output alone.

Responsibilities

• Uncover valuable customer problems among heavy electricity consumers: Build trusted relationships with industrial customers, prospects, partners, and experts to understand their operations, constraints, behaviors, and unmet needs.
• Explore energy markets and ecosystems: Analyze customer segments, market dynamics, regulations, competitors, partners, and emerging trends to identify attractive opportunities within industrial energy.
• Frame evidence-based opportunities: Translate customer and market insights into clear opportunity statements and testable assumptions around desirability and viability.
• Shape experiments with the team: Work with the Innovation Lead and the Innovation Developer to define success, design the smallest meaningful experiments and assess technical feasibility.
• Engage customers throughout discovery: Secure access to relevant users and decision-makers, test propositions and prototypes, and ensure experiments answer real customer and business questions.
• Guide investment decisions: Interpret evidence with the Innovation Lead and Developer and recommend whether to stop, pivot, continue learning, or invest further.
• Develop viable propositions: Contribute to value propositions, adoption strategies, early business models, partnerships, and routes to market.

Job description

We are looking for a bright Customer & Market Innovation Expert to join our Innovation team based in Louvain-la-Neuve.

Who we are

N-SIDE is a world leader in increasing the efficiency of life sciences and energy industries by providing software and services that optimize the use of natural resources, facilitating the transition to a more sustainable world.

To achieve this, N-SIDE leverages its deep industry knowledge, technical expertise, and understanding of applied mathematics to help global pharmaceutical and energy companies anticipate, adapt, and optimize their decisions.

The iLAB is where we explore what's next for our business. We explore new applications of decision intelligence to help organizations across various sectors make the most of their essential resources. In practice, we work alongside our existing teams to test out high-risk, uncertain ideas, while also using our technology toolbox to see where else our expertise can make an impact. Joining iLAB means picking up on early market signals, identifying emerging needs, and co-building solutions with partners who want to innovate alongside us.As a Customer & Market Innovation Expert, you will uncover and shape new opportunities at the intersection of industrial operations, energy, and technology. Your initial focus will be industrial organizations that are heavy electricity consumers, while remaining open to exploring adjacent sectors and new opportunity spaces.

You will bring customer and market expertise in the electricity consumption domain and collaborate closely with the Innovation Lead and Innovation Developer. Together, you will assess desirability, feasibility, and viability, turn insights into experiments, and decide which opportunities deserve further investment. This is not a traditional sales or market-research role: it requires strong product sense, commercial judgment, technical fluency, and a passion for solving meaningful customer problems in uncharted territory.

What you’ll do

• Uncover valuable customer problems among heavy electricity consumers: Build trusted relationships with industrial customers, prospects, partners, and experts to understand their operations, constraints, behaviors, and unmet needs.
• Explore energy markets and ecosystems: Analyze customer segments, market dynamics, regulations, competitors, partners, and emerging trends to identify attractive opportunities within industrial energy.
• Frame evidence-based opportunities: Translate customer and market insights into clear opportunity statements and testable assumptions around desirability and viability.
• Shape experiments with the team: Work with the Innovation Lead and the Innovation Developer to define success, design the smallest meaningful experiments and assess technical feasibility.
• Engage customers throughout discovery: Secure access to relevant users and decision-makers, test propositions and prototypes, and ensure experiments answer real customer and business questions.
• Guide investment decisions: Interpret evidence with the Innovation Lead and Developer and recommend whether to stop, pivot, continue learning, or invest further.
• Develop viable propositions: Contribute to value propositions, adoption strategies, early business models, partnerships, and routes to market.

About you

• Significant experience in customer discovery, product, market development, innovation, consulting, or a related role.
• Deep knowledge of energy market dynamics and industrial consumer purchasing mechanics.
• Experience or connections with energy-intensive industries is a strong advantage.
• Strong product sense, customer empathy, and ability to distinguish important problems from interesting ones.
• Commercial judgment and understanding of buying dynamics, value creation, adoption barriers, and business-model viability.
• Enough technical fluency to collaborate credibly with engineers, AI specialists, energy experts, and customer technical teams.
• Comfortable challenging assumptions (including your own) through customer engagement and experimentation.
• Able to build trusted relationships and align internal and external stakeholders.
• Autonomous, pragmatic, and comfortable operating in ambiguous and unfamiliar domains.
• Outcome-focused, measuring progress through learning, better decisions, and customer value rather than activity or output alone.

Travel: 20 - 30%

Our offer

What’s important for us is that you grow and learn, because we care about you, which is N-SIDE’s hallmark.You will be part of a fun and flexible work environment in which creativity, freedom and initiative are rewarded.

You will join a diverse team of over 200 passionate engineers, computer scientists, and business experts from 30+ different nationalities, with 25% holding PhDs. Together, we are committed to making a meaningful impact toward a more sustainable future.

• N-SIDE offers a great compensation package, which includes a company car and full range of benefits which can be personalised thanks to our Flex Income Plan.

All candidates will be treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, citizenship, disability, gender identity, marital or family status, veteran status or any other legally protected basis, in accordance with applicable law. N-SIDE will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics.

We are headquartered in Belgium with offices in the USA and Japan. The company is certified B Corporation, Best Managed Company by Deloitte Belgium, and ISO 27001.

Motivated to join our team and bring N-SIDE to the next level?

We are committed to respecting your privacy and protecting your personal data, including any information which allows us to identify you as an individual person. N-SIDE uses the applicant’s personal data in a fair and lawful manner. N-SIDE collects and processes personal data in accordance with the privacy statement available in the privacy policy. Personal information (applicant data) submitted by an applicant will only be used by N-SIDE to ensure an effective recruitment process and will be used for recruitment purposes only.