In early September, a senior executive appointment rippled through the wind power industry. Siemens Gamesa officially named Parisa Bardouni, former Chief Technology Officer of Aker Solutions, as Senior Vice President and Head of Nacelle Technology, based in Pamplona, Spain.
The timing is telling. One month prior, Siemens Energy released its Q3 FY2026 results, marking its wind power division’s first quarterly profit since FY2022: operating profit reached €56 million, profit before exceptional items hit €75 million, and the margin stood at 2.7%. CEO Christian Bruch called the result a remarkable achievement for the team.
Coming on the heels of a profitability turning point and the arrival of a top technology leader, Siemens Gamesa’s move is clearly about far more than a routine executive change.
Why her?
Bardouni spent a full 20 years at Aker Solutions. She joined in 2006 as a systems and test engineer, and rose steadily through the ranks to Head of Subsea Project Engineering, Head of Subsea Manufacturing, and Head of Subsea Technology Strategy, before ultimately taking the CTO role leading a global technical team of more than 250 people.
Her expertise spans two core fields: concept and product development for offshore wind, and technical integration across the full lifecycle of EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) operations in the oil and gas sector.
This combined background – deep knowledge of complex systems engineering for large-scale offshore equipment, plus full-lifecycle experience across both new energy and traditional energy industries – is precisely what Siemens Gamesa urgently needs right now.
The nacelle is the most critical and failure-prone component of a wind turbine. Over recent years, nacelle-related quality defects have cost Siemens Gamesa billions of euros and severely undermined its global offshore wind business. Installing a technology executive with expertise in complex offshore equipment systems at the helm of nacelle technology sends an unambiguous signal: the company is shoring up its quality defences at the technical source.
Profitable, but far from time to celebrate
A closer look at the financials calls for a sober assessment of this first quarterly profit in four years.
The positives are tangible: revenue reached €2.743 billion, up 13.5% year-on-year; the margin before exceptional items jumped from -17.5% to 2.7%, an improvement of 20.2 percentage points.
But red flags remain equally clear. New orders for the quarter totalled just €1.05 billion, plummeting 78.5% year-on-year, with a book-to-bill ratio of only 0.38. Free cash flow remained negative at -€518 million.
CEO Christian Bruch was frank at the analyst briefing: there are still many tough battles ahead. European offshore wind projects continue to face delays driven by power price pressures, grid connection bottlenecks and installation vessel shortages. If order intake does not rebound by 2028, European manufacturing capacity will face contraction pressure.
Siemens Gamesa is at a critical juncture: it has stemmed its losses but is far from full recovery. Bringing in Bardouni at this point addresses not only nacelle quality gaps, but also builds technical leadership for the next wave of product competition.
OEM competition returns to fundamentals
Taking a wider view, the competitive landscape of Europe’s big three wind turbine OEMs is shifting subtly. Over a decade, Nordex has narrowed its onshore delivery gap with Vestas from 268% to 64%. Vestas has defended its core position with a service footprint three times the size of Nordex’. Siemens Gamesa, meanwhile, has clawed its way back to profitability after four years of losses, seeking to steady its position through a combination of external top-tier technical talent and sweeping quality overhauls.
Fluctuations in order volumes are only the surface. What will truly define the next industry order is product reliability, delivery quality and technology iteration efficiency – precisely the areas where Bardouni is expected to deliver impact.
She is moving from the world of offshore engineering into the nacelle operations of a wind power giant. Whether this cross-sector leap will help Siemens Gamesa crack its toughest quality challenge may take a year or two to answer. But as a signal at least, the long-troubled wind industry veteran has started to take technical excellence seriously.
