Head of Academy

Drive Partner & Customer Enablement
- Machelen (BE) & Almere NL) Build and scale ILIAS Academy into a global enablement capability, empowering employees, partners and customers through scalable training, certification and knowledge transfer. Your responsibilities and tasks Define and execute the global Academy strategy and operating model, establishing clear standards, certification frameworks, commercial offerings and delivery principles to support ILIAS’s international growth. Transform the Academy into a scalable enablement function, reducing cost-to-serve and time-to-value by moving from trainer-led and onsite delivery towards digital, blended and train-the-trainer approaches for employees, partners and customers. Establish certification, quality and training-currency standards, ensuring that internal teams, implementation partners and customers have the required knowledge and certification to deliver, configure and extend ILIAS solutions. Drive close alignment with Product and Engineering, ensuring training, technical enablement and certification programmes remain current and are updated ahead of new software releases. Lead and professionalise the existing trainer organisation, developing capabilities in digital content architecture, virtual facilitation, train-the-trainer and scalable knowledge transfer, while strengthening partner and customer independence. Develop the Academy’s commercial potential and operational impact, shaping training offerings, programmes and pricing, managing capacity and demand, and providing leadership with clear insight into certification coverage, skill gaps and delivery-readiness risks. Your background and experience Proven experience building and scaling an Academy, training or enablement function, ideally from an early-stage or semi-greenfield situation and through a transition from traditional field training to digital, blended and train-the-trainer models. People leadership experience is essential. Strong background in enterprise software environments, such as ERP, EAM, SaaS or other complex B2B solutions, ideally gained in Professional Services, Technical Consulting, Customer Success or Technical Enablement. Demonstrated experience working with implementation partners and/or systems integrators, including developing certification frameworks that enable external consultants to independently deploy and support software solutions. Strong commercial mindset, with experience developing training offerings, pricing and monetisation models and the ability to build enablement into a sustainable business or profit centre. Proven ability to lead operational transformation and develop teams, particularly in evolving traditional trainers towards digital content creation, virtual facilitation and scalable knowledge transfer. Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the credibility to bridge Product & Engineering, Operations and Commercial teams. Fluent in English and preferably Dutch, and willing to travel approximately 20% internationally. Interested? Please send your CV and cover letter through www.mercuriurval.com (ref.no. BE-07973). Alternatively, for more information, please contact Wouter Snauwaert via wouter.snauwaert@mercuriurval.com

About the company
ILIAS Solutions is a fast-growing international defence software company, part of the Patria Group, developing and implementing mission-critical Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and ERP solutions for military organisations worldwide. Its software supports the logistics, asset management and operational readiness of air, land and naval forces. With around 220 employees across Europe and the United States, ILIAS is entering a new phase of international growth, supporting increasingly complex and large-scale defence deployments. The company combines the entrepreneurial spirit and agility of a growing technology business with the high standards of reliability, security and operational excellence required in the defence sector. The Academy is a key enabler of ILIAS’s next phase of growth. Established to provide tailored training for ILIAS customers, it is now evolving into a broader enablement capability for employees, implementation partners and customers. Its mission is to make knowledge transfer more scalable, strengthen implementation quality and customer independence, and ultimately enable ILIAS to grow its delivery capacity without relying solely on the expansion of its internal organisation.