Business Developer – Sustainable Work Innovation | Leiden

Want to make your mark on our time? Come work as a Business Developer at TNO in Leiden.

About this position

At TNO Health & Work, we are shaping the future of work. How do we ensure that people remain healthy, productive, and adaptable in a world that is changing at an unprecedented pace?

Through our Future of Work proposition, we address major societal challenges, including:

• Limited growth in labour productivity in the Netherlands.
• Structural labour shortages and mismatches in skills and competencies in the labour market.
• Existing and emerging health risks that threaten employability — including those related to digitalisation, workload, psychosocial stress, absenteeism, and workforce dropout.
• Strengthening the Dutch ecosystem to maximise innovation.

Our vision: increasing labour productivity and innovative capacity requires a workforce that is optimally employable. That is why we focus on promoting well-being, work ability, and lifelong learning, as well as eliminating or reducing (emerging) risks that contribute to absenteeism or early exit from the workforce.

We also contribute to the development of human-centred, labour-saving technologies, enabling more work to be done in the Netherlands with fewer people—without compromising job satisfaction. In addition, we actively support the transition to a skills-based labour market, where people can successfully adapt to change and new challenges.

To ensure our innovations create real-world impact, we are looking for a commercially driven Business Developer who can identify market opportunities and translate them into concrete partnerships, licensing agreements, and implementations.

What will be your role?

As a Business Developer Sustainable Work Innovation, you are responsible for commercialising and scaling TNO innovations in areas such as healthy workplaces, sustainable employability, emerging risks, behaviour, technology, skills development, and labour productivity.

You play a key role in translating the Future of Work knowledge and innovation agenda into impactful and scalable market propositions.

You actively engage with the market and build relationships with organisations such as healthcare institutions, educational organisations, large employers, sector funds, regional bodies, implementing agencies, and ministries. You identify concrete needs within these organisations and translate them into collaborations, contracts, and implementations of TNO innovations.

A key part of your role is bringing existing TNO tools, methods, and interventions to the market. These include validated measurement instruments, monitoring programmes, interventions for workload and sustainable employability, and data-driven solutions to improve work and health.

You work closely with researchers and innovation experts within TNO, while maintaining a strong focus on market development, commercial opportunities, and achieving impact through tangible deals and partnerships.

In your work, you will leverage TNO’s leading innovations, including:

• First 1,000 Working Days approach.
• ArboInzicht and monitoring programmes.
• Healthy Start at Work in the Region.
• Safety Culture Evolution Framework (SCEF).
• Technology Impact Methodology.
• ErgoRisk.
• Women’s health at work.
• Expertise Centre for Physically Demanding Work & Lexces.
• Validation of physically demanding roles (RVU schemes).
• CompetentNL and sectoral skills passports.

You will position these innovations within organisations and sectors and help scale them through licensing, implementation, partnerships, and sector-wide programmes.

In summary, your key responsibilities are:

Commercial market development

• You identify concrete organisational needs and translate them into commercial opportunities for TNO.
• You build relationships with organisations in sectors such as healthcare, education, government, and industry.

Sales of innovations and tools

• You actively bring TNO instruments, measurement methods, and interventions to the market and realise their implementation within organisations.

Licensing and revenue models

• You develop and implement revenue models around TNO knowledge and intellectual property, such as licensing, data services, and subscription models.

Business development and proposition development

• You develop new propositions based on market demand and TNO innovations and bring these to market.

Scaling through ecosystems

• You build public-private partnerships and consortia to scale innovations at a larger level.

Data-driven innovation

• You position TNO solutions for monitoring and data-driven analysis of work and health, including AI applications for risk prediction and prevention.

What we expect from you

• You have extensive experience in business development and commercial market development, for example in consultancy, innovation, technology, or the public sector.
• You have a proven track record in developing new partnerships, assignments, or deals with organisations.
• You have a strong sense of client needs and market opportunities and are energised by developing new propositions and collaborations.
• You have an affinity with themes such as labour productivity, psychosocial workload (PSA), emerging risks, skills development and lifelong learning, healthy and safe workplaces, innovation adoption, and AI applications.
• You are able to translate complex innovations into concrete propositions and business cases for organisations.
• You have strong networking skills and easily build relationships with organisations such as employers, sector funds, industry associations, knowledge institutions, and government bodies.
• You are comfortable engaging with senior leadership, HR and occupational health teams, policymakers, and researchers, and are able to connect stakeholders to successfully implement innovations.

What you'll get in return

Challenging and varied work with a real impact. And plenty of opportunities as, at TNO, you are in charge of shaping your career.

• An extremely professional, innovative working environment where colleagues are leading experts in their field.
• The opportunity to attend courses, workshops and conferences, and to receive training and coaching based on your needs.
• 33 days annual leave on a full-time basis plus a flexible holiday (prorated) that can be used on a cultural, religious, or otherwise important day of your choosing.
• Flexible working hours, the possibility to work parttime (32 or 36 hours) and the possibility of working from home.
• Access to our Talent Development Programme.
• A good pension scheme.

TNO as an employer

At TNO, we innovate for a healthier, safer and more sustainable life. And for a strong economy.