Head of Operations — Switching, Billing & Cash Collection / energy retail experience

We are building a digital retail platform for residential customers. The Head of Operations brings practical operational knowledge into digital delivery: understanding market, regulatory, commercial and process needs, designing the way we work, and making sure the operational engine behind the customer journey is accurate, compliant, scalable and AI-enabled by design rather than by retrofit.

The role covers the transactional backbone of the end-to-end customer journey (from contracting to switching, first bill, invoicing and collection) across our billing, CRM and operational tooling. Spain at launch, followed by other markets such as France, Germany and Italy. The person in this role will own switching, billing and invoicing, and cash collection end to end, from process and procedure design through business ownership of the supporting tooling, team build-up and day-to-day performance.

This is a build role, and an AI-first one. The processes, the controls, the procedures and the team do not exist yet; you will create them. We expect the operating model to be designed around automation and AI from the first process map, with the manual path treated as the exception rather than the starting point.

Key responsibilities

• Act as the business reference point for switching, billing, invoicing and cash collection across the Spanish operation and, subsequently, the markets that follow.
• Design and own the end-to-end switching process (cambio de comercializadora), including ATR request management, SIPS data validation, contract activation and exception handling
• Define the operational interface with the distribution system operators (e-distribución, i-DE, UFD, e-redes, Viesgo and regional DSOs)
• Manage the operational side of customer exits and win-back, including debt-related switching constraints
• Design the billing cycle end to end: meter data acquisition and validation, estimation logic, tariff application across residential structures (2.0TD for electricity, RL and TUR bands for gas), rebilling and corrections. Cash Collection & Credit Risk
• Design and run the collections’ function: SEPA Core direct debit cycles (Cuaderno 19 / 19-14), bank reconciliation (Cuaderno 43), returns and unpaid handling, and alternative payment methods
• Write the operating model: process maps, standard operating procedures, RACI, control framework and an escalation model that holds up under regulatory and financial audit
• Hire, structure and lead the operations team
• Identify, prioritise and specify AI use cases across the meter-to-cash chain
• Set the target automation ratio per process and raise it every quarter
• Collaborate across Offering, Growth, Customer Service and Finance on the business side, and Product, Architecture, Engineering and Data on the delivery side.

• University degree
• At least 5 years of experience in energy retail operations, with direct, hands-on ownership of switching, billing or cash collection in the Spanish market
• Solid command of the Spanish regulatory framework for residential electricity and/or gas retail: ATR processes, tariff structure, regulated charges, supply-interruption rules and consumer protection obligations
• Proven experience setting up processes, procedures and teams from scratch
• Strong practical understanding of the meter-to-cash chain and of the operational, commercial and regulatory constraints that shape it in a B2C environment
• Demonstrable, practical understanding of AI and automation applied to operational problems
• Comfortable with SQL, data models, APIs and file-based integrations
• Experience acting as business owner for a core operational platform — defining requirements, supporting vendor evaluation, driving UAT and business validation alongside an IT organisation
• Fluent Spanish and English, written and spoken. Italian, French or German language skills considered as a plus
• Experience in one or more other European retail energy markets — France, Germany or Italy in particular is highly appreciated
• Familiarity with a modern billing or CIS platform (SAP IS-U or S/4HANA Utilities, Salesforce Energy & Utilities Cloud, Gentrack, Hansen, Powercloud, Kraken or equivalent) is highly appreciated
• Experience in a start-up or scale-up environment, comfortable operating without an established playbook, is a plus
• Experience with collaboration and documentation tools such as Jira, Confluence, Miro, Visio, Signavio or BPMN tools is an advantage