BESS Commercial Manager

Background to Aukera

Aukera is a leading pan-European renewable energy developer and Independent Power Producer (IPP), dedicated to accelerating the energy transition across the continent. Headquartered in Belgium, with offices in Brussels, Bucharest, London, Edinburgh, Rome, and Berlin, we manage a diversified pipeline of over 15 GW in onshore wind, solar, and battery energy storage system (BESS) projects. Currently, we have close to 600MW in construction with another cca 800MW to go into construction in the next 6 months.

We pride ourselves on our values and our collaborative, supportive working environment. Our team is friendly, caring, highly professional, and deeply committed to making a real impact on the planet and delivering value for our shareholders. As a rapidly growing company, we seek high performers from all backgrounds who are self-motivated, take ownership, and are passionate about driving value creation. We value diversity and are proud to have an international team representing 14 nationalities, with around 30% female employees. At Aukera, mutual respect and effective collaboration are at the heart of everything we do.

The role

We are seeking a BESS Commercial Manager to actively monitor and drive the revenue performance of our standalone BESS fleet, with a particular emphasis on our projects in Romania that will be among the first built in the country.

This role is centered on ensuring that BESS systems across the relevant power markets where Aukera operates generate the best revenue performance from a risk/reward point of view, by leveraging data analysis, market expertise, and operational insights. The role has the potential to strongly support Aukera both on the Asset Management side but also in a front office context, supporting Aukera’s business development and the growth of its revenue function.

With a joint (dual) reporting line to the Head of Asset Management and Head of Revenue, you will play a pivotal role with your contribution to the best-in-class approach to manage BESS assets, acting as the commercial lead of our storage operational portfolio. Your mission will be to rigorously ensure revenue control, improving the optimizers and trading performance to ensure maximum value extraction while balancing asset health. This is a highly specialized and analytical commercial role designed to bridge the gap between technical battery management and energy market revenue supervision. As we build out one of largest BESS pipelines, the role will be responsible for the “commercial stewardship” during the operational phase.

This role can be based in any of our offices (London, Bucharest, Milan, Rome, Seville, Madrid, Berlin or Brussels) and requires presence in the office at least 3 days per week.

Responsibilities

• Lead the interaction with the Route-to-Market (RTM) Provider/Optimizer, actively managing the agreement

• Review the trading strategies and measure performance of RTM providers

• Leading the internal revenue analyses of performance across the company's BESS operational fleet and developing advanced data-driven tools

• Manage the commercial activity of the asset managers and work in coordination with the technical asset management, supervising day-to-day workflow and periodic reporting

• Analyse data from various market sources to extract insights and generate actionable market analysis reports

• Measure the performance against market stochastics & budget

• Steer cross-market trading strategy in the relation to the full revenue stacking of BESS standalone fleet

• Set and re-assess risk tolerance

• Proactively identifying operational risks and opportunities resulting from regulatory change

• Lead meetings with internal and external stakeholders to discuss performance, market characteristics and risks

• Cross functional collaboration: define a structured feedback loop to support the Revenue origination team for the next investments

Reporting and Analysis

• Monitor daily/weekly trading BESS P&L

• Analyse daily, weekly and monthly BESS P&L and commentary from Route-to-Market Provider and other relevant reporting from asset managers and O&Ms

• Develop internal analytical models to assess trading and operational strategies

• Use of external data sources to assess P&L potential & benchmark

Experience & Qualifications

• Professional Experience: more than 5 years of experience in energy management, electricity trading, BESS optimisation/commercial operations/portfolio management. Direct experience working on the front desk within an electricity trader (integrated utility, oil major or dedicated BESS asset optimiser) and trading/portfolio management across electricity markets (Intraday, Balancing) is considered a strong plus

• Demonstrable capability in time series analysis, development of analytical models and performance monitoring tools

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, mathematics, physics, computer science, econometrics, or related field. Postgraduate studies in AI, machine learning, or data science considered a strong plus

• Strong technical proficiency in Python, SQL and data analysis workflows.

• In-depth understanding of European Power Markets, including day-ahead, Intraday, and ancillary Services (FCR, aFRR, mFRR). Specific experience with the Romanian energy market and its regulatory framework is a strong plus

• Understanding of Li-ion BESS behaviour, performance KPIs, system data and BESS operations

• Optimizer challenge and oversight: demonstrated ability to analyze trading performance, identify revenue leakage, and critically challenge the bidding strategies of third-party optimizers or route-to-market providers

• Advanced Excel skills

Business Skills

• Strong verbal and written skills in English and the local language of the office location are required. Proficiency in an additional language from our offices will be an advantage.

• Confident in building relationships internally across the team, and externally with the main route-to-market providers

• Adept at working to challenging deadlines, prioritizing effectively and managing own workload.

• Enjoys working with a dynamic and highly engaged team, as well as working independently

• A flexible and pro-active attitude, keen to take responsibility and to use initiative.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with attention to detail

Employee Benefits

Competitive package tailored to the office location