GIS Specialist
Sun King
Kenya
Posted on Jan 20, 2026
Job Location: Nairobi, Kenya
About the Role:
Sun King is seeking a high-impact GIS Specialist to significantly strengthen how geospatial insights inform our work across Africa. We have already established a strong foundation in using geospatial data to assess energy needs alongside our market reach. This role will build on that momentum by shaping our technology stack, sourcing high-quality data, and developing a reliable platform that enables the effective use of geospatial insights across the organisation.
This role applies advanced spatial methods to inform key business areas, contributing to improved sales planning, operational effectiveness, policy engagement, and participation in subsidy programmes.
The successful candidate brings strong GIS expertise within the energy sector, familiarity with African electrification and socio-demographic datasets, and experience developing production-ready GIS tools and platforms. Equally important is the ability to work across teams and ensure geospatial insights are meaningfully applied throughout the organisation.
About the Role:
Sun King is seeking a high-impact GIS Specialist to significantly strengthen how geospatial insights inform our work across Africa. We have already established a strong foundation in using geospatial data to assess energy needs alongside our market reach. This role will build on that momentum by shaping our technology stack, sourcing high-quality data, and developing a reliable platform that enables the effective use of geospatial insights across the organisation.
This role applies advanced spatial methods to inform key business areas, contributing to improved sales planning, operational effectiveness, policy engagement, and participation in subsidy programmes.
The successful candidate brings strong GIS expertise within the energy sector, familiarity with African electrification and socio-demographic datasets, and experience developing production-ready GIS tools and platforms. Equally important is the ability to work across teams and ensure geospatial insights are meaningfully applied throughout the organisation.
- Department
- Global Analytics and Technology
- Employment Type
- Permanent - Full Time
- Location
- Kenya
- Workplace type
- Hybrid
What you would be expected to do:
Geospatial Infrastructure & Data Management
- Design, build, and maintain Sun King’s internal geospatial data environment, consolidating electrification plans, socioeconomic datasets, grid maps, demographic layers, mobility data, and other spatial resources across markets.
- Develop and maintain geospatial databases with a strong focus on data quality, consistency, and ease of access.
- Integrate Sun King’s proprietary data (sales performance, agent networks, customer locations, asset positions, and operational activity) into GIS platforms.
Advanced Spatial Work & Business Integration
- Streamline GIS workflows and develop custom scripts to improve processing speed and efficiency.
- Work closely with Data & BI teams to incorporate GIS outputs into company dashboards and planning tools (for example, Tableau or Power BI).
- Develop or coordinate interactive, web-based visualisation platforms and layered GIS maps that combine demographic, economic, and infrastructure data for use by internal and external stakeholders.
- Partner with software development teams to integrate GIS data and market potential models into mobile applications used by field teams.
Knowledge Exchange & Stakeholder Engagement
- Present complex spatial insights in clear, practical ways that enable action among non-technical teams.
- Enable internal teams to apply geospatial tools and outputs effectively in their work.
- Coordinate relationships with external GIS partners, research institutions, and data providers.
You might be a strong candidate if you have:
- A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Geography, GIS, Remote Sensing, Data Science, Energy Planning, or a related field.
- Experience applying GIS within the energy sector, including electrification planning, grid expansion modelling, or off-grid market assessments.
- Experience working with open-source and/or commercial GIS platforms (such as ArcGIS, QGIS, or equivalent enterprise systems) for modelling, data management, and spatial work.
- Experience automating workflows using scripting languages, preferably Python (for example, GeoPandas and related libraries).
- Familiarity with visualisation and reporting tools such as Power BI or Tableau for incorporating spatial insights into organisational dashboards.
- Familiarity with African electrification and development datasets, including grid maps, electrification models, census data, night-time lights, demographic surveys (DHS, LSMS), and national energy plans.
- Experience contributing to end-to-end GIS systems that align with broader organisational workflows, including exposure to cloud-based data pipelines and APIs (such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud).
- The ability to work across teams and translate spatial insights into clear, usable outputs.
- Strong communication and storytelling skills, with an ability to use maps to convey engaging narratives.
What Sun King offers:
- The opportunity to contribute to initiatives that advance SDG 7 and influence how sales and distribution are approached in a global off-grid solar company.
- Professional growth within a dynamic, fast-growing, high-impact industry.
- A workplace culture that values openness, learning, and continuous improvement.
- A multicultural experience, working with colleagues from diverse geographies, nationalities, and backgrounds.
- Structured learning and development programmes through the Sun King Academy, designed to strengthen professional, people, and functional 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 built a new kind of energy utility: distributed, green, customer-centric, and affordable. We bring clean, reliable, decentralized energy directly into people’s lives — from solar kits that provide first-time energy access to multi-kilowatt systems that serve both off-grid users and grid-connected customers powering larger homes, schools, hospitals, farms, offices, and light manufacturing.
Already, 25 million homes and businesses rely on Sun King for electricity supply and the appliances and services it enables: lighting, televisions, fans, refrigeration, and smartphones.
Sun King combines energy generation, energy-efficient appliances, installation, and financing into one seamless offering. Think of it as a distributed utility, designed for wherever energy is needed and designed to scale with its users as incomes and energy needs grow.
Sun King makes solar products affordable to low-income households and businesses via ‘pay-as-you-go’ (PAYG) purchase financing. Sun King installs solar after customers pay a small deposit. Customers then make small, manageable payments of as little as US $0.14 a day via mobile money or cash.
Sun King combines energy generation, energy-efficient appliances, installation, and financing into one seamless offering. Think of it as a distributed utility, designed for wherever energy is needed and designed to scale with its users as incomes and energy needs grow.
Sun King makes solar products affordable to low-income households and businesses via ‘pay-as-you-go’ (PAYG) purchase financing. Sun King installs solar after customers pay a small deposit. Customers then make small, manageable payments of as little as US $0.14 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.
Sun King collects payments digitally through mobile money systems and its 35,000 field agents — over 1 million payments each day. To date, Sun King has extended more than $1.4 billion in PAYG loans to customers.
Sun King began by powering homes and businesses with solar systems delivered through PAYG financing. Now, we’re using the same model to make smartphones and clean cooking equipment affordable: helping households connect to the digital economy and transition from wood-based fuels to modern, sustainable alternatives.
Sun King employs 3,500 full-time staff in 14 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 42% of Sun King’s workforce.
Sun King collects payments digitally through mobile money systems and its 35,000 field agents — over 1 million payments each day. To date, Sun King has extended more than $1.4 billion in PAYG loans to customers.
Sun King began by powering homes and businesses with solar systems delivered through PAYG financing. Now, we’re using the same model to make smartphones and clean cooking equipment affordable: helping households connect to the digital economy and transition from wood-based fuels to modern, sustainable alternatives.
Sun King employs 3,500 full-time staff in 14 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 42% of Sun King’s workforce.
