VP, Deployment

Neara is a software technology company that provides a physics-enabled digital twin platform specifically designed for electric utility infrastructure. The platform enables utilities to create a behaviourally identical digital model of their entire network, integrating assets, surrounding terrain, weather conditions, and vegetation into a single physics-accurate environment. This allows network operators to simulate real-world scenarios including severe weather events, wildfires, floods, and equipment failures to understand risk, predict outcomes, and prioritize interventions before incidents occur. Neara's mission centers on improving the resilience, safety, and efficiency of energy infrastructure, which directly supports the clean energy transition by helping utilities manage aging grids, reduce outages, and enable the integration of renewable energy sources. The platform addresses critical climate-related challenges such as wildfire mitigation, storm response, and flood management, making it a key tool for utilities facing increasing climate-driven grid risks. By replacing fragmented point solutions with a unified model, Neara helps reduce the environmental and financial costs associated with infrastructure failures and inefficient maintenance. What distinguishes Neara is its use of physics-based simulation rather than statistical approximation, enabling users to move from broad risk awareness to precise failure prediction and actionable planning. The platform supports a wide range of use cases including vegetation analysis, clearance risk assessment, conductor clashing detection, asset lifecycle management, distribution and transmission network design, and regulatory reporting. Neara operates across multiple geographies including the United States, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand, serving major electric utilities seeking to modernize their network management capabilities.

Imagine having the power to stress-test an entire power grid against a hurricane or thunderstorm before the clouds even gather. That is the reality we are creating at Neara.

We use advanced machine learning to create engineering-grade, physics enabled digital twins of electricity grids across four continents, this helps asset owners understand their biggest challenges and bring the most viable solutions to life across millions of kilometres of infrastructure.

By simulating extreme weather and structural stress at a network-wide scale, we empower the world’s largest utilities to pinpoint risks, optimise investments and build a more resilient global energy future.

Our team is a collection of brilliant minds who are fanatical about making a tangible difference in the real world, utilising AI and machine learning to accelerate everything from data classification to complex scenario analysis. We have built a special culture where innovation thrives because everyone owns the mission and we need smart, creative people to help us scale this impact to every corner of the globe.

What it means to lead Deployment at Neara

At Neara, Deployment is the engine that turns a customer's real-world network into an accurate, trusted digital twin: faster, more predictably, and more automatically every quarter. When we do it well, the signal is unmistakable:

• Requesting a model build or standard QA is as simple and reliable as calling an API: scoped and delivered to a known standard, every time.

• A complex, large-scale infrastructure project ships on time and on margin, and the model does what the customer actually needed, not just what the contract specified.

• Work that is bespoke today becomes a standardised, repeatable offering over time, with consistent in quality, measurable, and efficient to deliver at scale.

You own that engine, and the standard it runs to.

This is an execution role, not a coordination role. You own Neara's model-build engine end to end for a global customer base: model build, QA and CS-defined deployment processes, contractor partner management, and deployment operations. You build the delivery playbook, own the metrics, develop regional leaders, and are directly accountable for model quality, build velocity, and on-time delivery. And you keep pushing standardisation outward: more and more use cases turned into simple, repeatable protocols the rest of the business can call.

A note on what this role isn't: this isn't a program management or stakeholder coordination role, and it isn't a customer success, sales, or account management role: you won't own customer relationships or revenue. You will own the economics of delivery, though - the cost and efficiency of how it runs. You will be hands-on and technically credible, able to work through the model build alongside your teams, weigh quality and scope tradeoffs, and hold the standard without relying on CS to interpret what the customer needs. It is a role for someone who would rather build the system that makes delivery predictable than report on it.

You'll report directly to the CEO and lead Neara's global build teams, partner closely with Digitisation and Engineering, and work closely with Customer Success and Product.

What You'll Do

• Own the engine: end-to-end deployment across model build, QA and CS-defined deployment processes, contractor partner management, and deployment operations.

• Standardise and automate: make model build and standard processes efficient, predictable, and increasingly automated - turning delivery into a simple, well-defined interface the business can call, progressively standardising solutions that are bespoke today (such as vegetation and pole loading, and over time auto-design), and using AI to lift throughput, allocation accuracy, and forecasting.

• Own the economics and metrics: the delivery P&L (cost per deployment, contractor spend, utilisation, and margin etc), and the KPIs that run it (cycle time, on-time rate, quality etc), with full visibility across deliverable types.

• Hold quality and the playbook: consistent digital-twin quality and velocity, and a delivery playbook (model build, QA, contractor execution) that standardises what good looks like across regions.

• Build and lead global teams: developing regional leaders and ICs across AU, US, EU, and India, who operate autonomously within a single global framework.

• Run the portfolio: prioritisation, capacity allocation across internal teams and contractors, and delivery risk management.

What You'll Bring

• 10+ years leading delivery or implementation functions, with at least 3 years at VP or equivalent level in a global SaaS business.

• Technically credible in complex delivery - your background is in deep-technology or complex enterprise SaaS (engineering-led, data-heavy, or physically modelled products). You engage directly with model build teams, weigh quality and scope tradeoffs, and hold standards without relying on CS to interpret requirements.

• You build standards from how the work actually gets done - diagnosing what to regionalise versus standardise globally - not from a generic best practice playbook. If you've led mainly through process and frameworks rather than technical depth, this likely isn't the right fit.

• Proven track record leading delivery at scale in enterprise SaaS - ideally having built or substantially rebuilt a delivery model (not just operated within one), and enforced playbooks that standardise what good looks like across distributed teams, not just documented them.

• Experience leading global delivery teams across regions and timezones (direct experience across AU, US, EU, and India preferred).

• Deep familiarity with US enterprise customer dynamics - comfortable operating in the timezone and cadence of large, complex US project environments

• Strong delivery economics and operational judgment - utilisation, margin, capacity planning, and contractor cost structures; you've owned third-party/vendor performance, not just tracked it, and you run delivery from data, not instinct.

• Experience managing third-party contractors and delivery partners at scale - you've owned vendor performance, not just tracked it.

• Familiarity with utility, energy, or heavy infrastructure customers is an advantage - you understand how compliance, operational risk, and procurement cycles shape delivery timelines and expectations.

• Active user of AI tooling in your own workflow, with demonstrated impact on delivery efficiency or forecasting.

• Based in Sydney, Australia - willing to travel internationally, including regular travel to the US

Why work here

• Competitive salary + ESOP. Significant career development and growth opportunities.

• Fully flexible working arrangements with a well-stocked office in Redfern.

• Regular office events

• Highly meritocratic, non-bureaucratic, and no-ego work culture.

• The opportunity to work on complex, meaningful products and real-world problems.

• The opportunity to play a direct, critical role in the trajectory of a high-growth company.

• Neara values diversity, belonging, and equal employment opportunities. We encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply.

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