Product Manager (Solar Home Systems) at Engie Africa

Team: Product and Research & Development 

Reporting To: Head of Product Management

Hay Grade:15

Job Purpose/Mission 

The Product Manager is responsible for the core of Engie Energy Access (EEA)  product line. As a leader in the PAYGO sphere, our products are the first step into the homes of our customers and are a key part of the EEA customer lifetime value. The Product Manager will deliver life-changing solutions and offerings in line with EEA’s product development process.

This role sits within the Product and Research & Development department at EEA and involves working closely with the R&D team to develop and deploy new solar home systems across the Engie Energy Access markets. You will balance delivering custom energy solutions for our customers as well productizing these offerings so they can be scalable.

You will own the conceptualization and business positioning of new products and represent the voice of the customer on cross-functional teams to design, implement, monitor, and scale new products. This is an exciting role which requires creativity and strategic visioning as well as operational execution and working cross-functionally with our customer service, operations, sales, and technical teams on the ground.

Responsibilities

• Drive continuous collection and analysis of customer data on device performance, emerging use cases and customer satisfaction and use this data to design product interventions
• Manage the lifecycle of solar home systems and solar accessory products from conceptualization, to market introduction and eventual phasing out
• Own the Profit & Loss of the portfolio of products under your management, and working across departments ensure that each product meets its commercial targets
• Collaborate with country team departments (commercial, operations, product, etc.) to develop clear market requirements for product iterations and new product development
• Work closely with Research & Development and supply chain teams to develop new products and improve existing ones
• Maintain a bird’s eye view across the portfolio, identifying opportunities of increased optimization and efficiency in line with company targets
• Contribute to the overarching company product strategy by informing the development of the product roadmap
• Support country teams to design and run product pilots and launches, as well as implement product improvements according to local market needs

Knowledge and skills 

Experience:

• Minimum of 5 years of relevant work experience (product management, project management, off-grid industry, customer insights, etc.)
• Project management experience and strong business acumen: entrepreneurial candidates who have started or contributed significantly to a particular project, team, or new company. Candidates who have seen projects through from start to finish, from design to scale up phase
• Strong interpersonal skills to interface with all members of both the business and engineering teams
• Ability to coordinate with a diverse group of stakeholders
• Experience designing or building or supporting component based solar systems
• Quantitative analysis skills and an understanding of effective technical communication and data visualization methods
• Ability to breakdown technical decisions into a thorough decision-making process

Requirement:

• Any EEA country (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia, Mozambique, Benin, Nigeria & Cote d'ivoire) but preference for Benin, Nigeria & Cote d'ivoire.
• Experience in consumer product development and ‘last mile’ customer delivery
• Bachelors degree in engineering, economics or related topic
• Ability to travel internationally up to 25% of time

Language(s): 

• English
• French is a plus
• Swahili is a plus