Sustainability Innovation Manager

Job Title: Sustainability Innovation Manager

Location: Cambridge, UK (Hybrid, 50% working time at the office)

Employment Type: full-time, permanent

The Job 

The primary purpose of this role is to identify, develop and coordinate the delivery of collaborative innovation projects to showcase AVEVA’s solutions and drive expansion in new sustainability-related end markets. The role will work closely with external eco-system partners and AVEVA’s own Product and Commercial teams, to advance business growth, industry diversification and raise the company’s profile as a leading provider of sustainability solutions.

Dimensions

This role sits within AVEVA’s Sustainability Accelerator team, created to position AVEVA as a leading provider of sustainability solutions by advancing an integrated Product, Marketing and Sales approach. Within the Accelerator framework, this role focuses on engagement activities with AVEVA’s Partner and Product Organizations, especially Portfolio, Policy and the Chief Technologists’ Organization. AVEVA’s sustainability product innovation strategy is global in nature but this role will have a strong focus on developing opportunities in the UK and EU to start. This role supports driving progress developing strategic relationship with the innovation ecosystem, managing new innovation projects that  showcase sustainability solutions, and accelerating the number of partner solutions with the AVEVA Sustainability Impact badge.

Key responsibilities 

• Identify, develop and coordinate the delivery of collaborative projects that showcase AVEVA’s solutions and advance sustainability use cases in partnership with customers, targets and academic research institutions.
• Proactively identify where AVEVA’s solutions can be deployed at the leading edge of industrial innovation and in support of key public policy goals, including decarbonization, resilience and responsible AI adoption.
• Lead on getting internal alignment on key sectors and geographies for collaboration projects, aligned with commercial business development priorities around sustainability and innovation.
• Support portfolio strategy by enabling AVEVA to accelerate development and deployment of key partnerships and solutions, and inform product/market fit related to sustainability.
• Build relationships with start-ups that are aligned to Portfolio roadmap and support sustainability-related use cases, working closely with the AVEVA CONNECT team and Chief Technologist’s Organization.
• Cultivate strategic partnerships with academic research centres focused on the leading research centres aligned with our geographic/sectoral commercial business development priorities.
• Generate opportunities for collaboration as per the 5 pathways identified in AVEVA’s research partnership offer: software for teaching/research; student challenges; industry/academia grant initiatives; net zero campus operations; PhD and Post Docs endowments.

Essential Requirements

• Advanced degree in related field (e.g., engineering, computing, international policy or sustainability)
• 5-7 years of technical experience and product domain knowledge related to industrial software
• Prior experience managing innovation projects that involve multiple stakeholders
• Proven experience in driving sustainability initiatives, preferably related to software product integration and innovation
• Knowledge of sustainability drivers for industry with customer-facing experience preferred
• Strong strategic acumen and program management skills, ability to work across function and drive alignment.
• Excellent communication skills, ability to represent the business on a global scale both internally and externally (customers, conferences, analysts etc)
• Collaboration mindset, ability to work across organizational boundaries
• A desire to grow and contribute to our team through constructive feedback
• Creativity and drive to help build and manage a program from the ground up

Important Working Relationships

• Sustainability Accelerator Director – support director shaping and executing the accelerator strategies for product, innovation and ecosystems, Government Affairs and Policy to identify innovation opportunities and funding streams linked to government spending programs and policy agendas
• Chief Technologists Organization to establish a shared innovation funnel: from ideation to deployment, with checkpoints for ESG impact and tech feasibility, and establishment of joint objectives for key results, such as emissions avoided, customer adoption rates, or tech maturity milestones.
• Partners organization to identify green partner capabilities and develop further enablement and advance sustainability capabilities via CONNECT, including co-development of use cases that align AVEVA’s CONNECT platform with sustainability KPIs—e.g., emissions tracking, circularity metrics, or adaptive energy optimization.
• Portfolio and Business Area leads to shape and influence strategic planning and budget allocation to support sustainability solutions.  
• R&D Innovation, Portfolio and Incubation team to promote sustainability awareness and partner on development of new sustainability-related capabilities.  
• Industry principles to collaborate developing insight of industrial sustainability trend and demand of solution.
• Delivery and Lighthouse team to collaborate on sustainability practice and prove of value.