Associate Product Manager
Sun King
Product
Zambia
Posted on Jan 10, 2025
Location: Zambia
About the role:
As a member of the New Product Development Team, you will be a key stakeholder in developing Sun King’s future products and services. Reporting to the Global Product Manager, you will work at the intersection of business, technology, and customer experience teams to ideate, develop, pilot, and launch new life-changing products across Sub-Saharan Africa.
About the role:
As a member of the New Product Development Team, you will be a key stakeholder in developing Sun King’s future products and services. Reporting to the Global Product Manager, you will work at the intersection of business, technology, and customer experience teams to ideate, develop, pilot, and launch new life-changing products across Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Department
- Operations
- Employment Type
- Permanent - Full Time
- Location
- Zambia
- Workplace type
- Onsite
- Reporting To
- Global Product Manager
What you would be expected to do:
New Product Identification
- Generate, refine and consolidate new product ideas, market research and customer requirements, drawing from relationships across the company, including R&D, sales, marketing, and operations teams.
- Develop customer survey templates, collect feedback, and present them to internal stakeholders.
- Assess current market offers from other companies, seeking opportunities for differentiation.
- Translate product strategy into detailed requirements for prototype construction.
- Test prototypes and potential new products to validate its commercial viability. Specify product requirements and feedback for R&D.
New Product Pilots
- Act as the Project Manager to deploy successful pilots, defining the purpose, major deliverables, KPIs, timelines, risks, and duties of internal stakeholders.
- Track and document key pilot project deliverables, including customer engagement, usage habits, product availability, and the number of potential customers generated weekly
- Coordinate with internal and external stakeholders to ensure deliverables (selecting pilot areas, inventory readiness, training, etc.) are met on time.
- Carry out Engineering Validation Testing (focusing on the features) and Technical Validation Testing (focusing on integration) and generate a Product Requirements Document (PRD)
- Collect Customer Feedback on the product performance and expectations and present to internal stakeholders.
- Report the progress and results of the pilot through a comprehensive memo or a presentation. Provide insights on lessons learned, recommendations for a successful GTM approach, product design or process changes, if needed.
- Oversee a successful transition from the pilot stage to the commercial scale.
New Product Introduction
- Clearly convey the product vision. Translate technical specifications, benefits, differentiation against other companies, and its fit with Sun King to a language customers can appreciate.
- Work with various departments to design a sales and service process for new products and find the route to market.
- Help the Training and Marketing Teams by reviewing training materials, spec sheets, packaging, and highlighting the Customer Value Proposition (CVP)
- Help in the development of service requirements for new products, working closely with the After-Sales and Call Center teams to ensure customer service is prepared prior to the product launch,
- Work with the R&D Team to define and implement product iterations and cascade the changes to respective stakeholders.
Any other business
- Any other business as assigned by your supervisor.
You might be a strong candidate if you:
- A bachelor's degree in product design, engineering, energy systems, the physical sciences, or a related field.
- Entrepreneurial spirit and ability to work without supervision, ability to figure things out with innovative thinking, problem-solving skills, and presence of mind.
- Curious to ideate and expand product offerings in segments complimentary to solar energy, such as clean mobility solutions.
- Ability to collect and synthesize user feedback for actionable items
- Critical thinking skills: Strong ability to structure problems and drive towards solutions even in ambiguous situations.
- Financial knowledge to quantify economic value propositions and commercial opportunities of new product offerings.
- Experience in driving the expansion of new product lines or segments.
- Can execute and manage projects effectively.
- Open to travel within Southern Africa and possibly to other Sun King markets.
- Display excellent communication skills, energy, and the ability to handle setbacks at a rapidly growing organization and communicate products in the lens of multiple stakeholders.
What we offer (in addition to compensation and statutory benefits):
- A platform for professional growth in a rapidly expanding, high-impact sector.
- Immerse in a collaborative culture, energized by employees of Sun King who are collectively motivated by fostering a transformative, sustainable venture.
- A genuinely global environment: Engage and learn alongside a diverse group from varied geographies and backgrounds.
- Tailored learning pathways through the Sun King Center for Leadership to elevate your leadership and managerial capabilities.
About Sun King
Sun King is the world’s leading off-grid solar energy company, combining cutting-edge product design, fintech, and field operations to deliver energy access for the 1.8 billion people who live without an affordable and reliable electric-grid connection. Sun King has connected more than 20 million homes to solar power across Africa and Asia, adding over 200,000 homes each month.
Sun King makes solar products affordable to low-income households and businesses via ‘pay-as-you-go’ purchase financing. Sun King installs solar after customers pay a small deposit. Customers then make small, manageable payments of as little as US $0.11 a day via mobile money or cash.
Instead of paying for expensive, polluting, and health-damaging kerosene for lighting or diesel for power, customers unlock savings through accessing solar power and after one to two years of payments, customers own their solar equipment outright. To date, our Sun King solar products have saved customers more than $4 billion cumulatively.
Sun King collects payments digitally through mobile money systems and its 28,000 field agents — over 650,000 payments each day. Embedded electronics inside each Sun King device regulate usage based on payments, similar to the operation of a pre-paid mobile or electricity meter.
Sun King collects payments digitally through mobile money systems and its 28,000 field agents — over 650,000 payments each day. Embedded electronics inside each Sun King device regulate usage based on payments, similar to the operation of a pre-paid mobile or electricity meter.
From cost-effective solar systems that provide home lighting and phone charging to robust solar inverters that can power high-energy appliances such as laptops, computers, refrigerators, and more, effectively acting as a full stand-in for grid power, Sun King’s products cater to a wide range of income segments and energy needs. Leveraging its proven distribution network and brand, Sun King is expanding its range of products and services to encompass clean cooking, electric mobility, entertainment, and more, aiming to address the needs of our underserved customers.
Sun King employs 2,800 full-time staff in 12 countries, with specialties spanning product design, data science, logistics, customer service, sales, software, operations, and more — all with a passion to serve off-grid families.
Sun King is committed to gender diversity in the workplace. Women represent 44% of Sun King’s workforce.
