PEG Africa Jobs 2022

PEG delivers Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) asset-based financing to consumers who lack both access to reliable electricity and formal banking services. PEG’s anchor product – a basic solar home system that includes six lights, a phone charger, a radio, and a TV – allows consumers living on $5-10 per day to access clean light for working and studying after hours, avoid harmful air pollution from kerosene-based lighting solutions, and also build credit for additional products and services over time.

To date, PEG has raised over $60 million and has over 600 full time staff across Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mali. PEG has also won numerous awards, including the prestigious 2017 Ashden International Award for excellence in sustainable energy, and was named as one of the “fastest growing companies in Africa” by the London Stock Exchange.

Job Description

Job Title: Product Director 

About The Role

Are you excited about working for a scale up, social enterprise creating impact on local communities? We are looking for a Product Director who will play a pivotal role in the future of our company through the development, maintenance, and improvements of our software systems. To be successful this role will set out and develop the technical vision and development of the most automated and easy to use ERP, CRM, and related systems. You will lead teams of Product managers and developers to successfully set and execute the vision for the Product roadmap.

In this role, you will work cross-functionally to guide products from conception to launch by connecting the technical team, business teams and our clients in rural communities. PEG aims to build products that allow our clients and business teams to easily get on with the task of electrifying rural West Africa communities one home at a time. All the while ensuring that our internal processes are followed and we are able to draw actionable insights to improve performance. Understanding business processes and connecting simple software solutions which are followed by our workforce is the key focus.

Candidate Attributes

• You have a strong sense of work ownership and understand how to foster and manage ownership in colleagues.
• You are an excellent communicator, speaking the language of product, developers, and business alike. You have experience and comfort communicating with the entire range of company personnel, from data entry interns to C-suite.
• You are fluent in English and can speak at least intermediate business French and can embed yourself in the culture of any of our markets.
• You have experience of working in global product teams, preferable across geographies (In African setting) and have demonstrated strong business understanding and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent analytical skills with demonstrated experience turning data into actionable insights.
• Entrepreneurial mindset, with a bias for user-focused innovation and development.
• Financial understanding and FinTech experience (Asset finance) are a plus.
• Your belief and execution in investing in the right people to grow the department will be instrumental for success.
• Similarly, your customer-centric mindset and evangelism of the user experience is how you create products your users/customers love.
• You ask tough questions like “Are we building what matters?” and “How are we improving the user adoption of this feature?” while keeping a great eye on design and testing.

Functional Competencies

• BComm or BSc degree / diploma (Product, Process, or Project management) or relative work experience.
• Extensive product leadership experience and strong teaming abilities.
• Ability to self-manage while managing assigned teams and projects.
• Ability to manage multiple business initiatives in an entrepreneurial environment.
• Excellent presentation skills that encompass clear, compelling communications.
• Strategic & creative thinker with the ability to craft go-to-market strategies and campaigns in collaboration with marketing.
• Strong project management skills and attention to detail.
• Able to formulate and implement global strategies for systems, process, and people and present those in an attractive manner.
• Successfully implemented data-driven processes to turn a vision into an actionable roadmap.

Technical Competencies

• Advanced knowledge of BI, task/project management and road mapping tools.
• Basic understanding of SQL for being able to query.
• Proficiency with ERP and/or CRM systems (preferably Odoo).
• Expert proficiency with Microsoft Excel or Google Suite, and collaboration tools like Slack or Jira are advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Lead, Mentor and Manage teams of product managers, developers, and related personnel.
• Develop and execute a winning roadmap which you can distill into relevant presentations to key stakeholders. PEG is introducing internally developed and off the shelf products for its various teams. You’ll be responsible for working senior leadership to setting a coherent strategy behind this and package it in PEG’s product road map.
• As the ambassador for automation and a data culture in PEG you’ll need to proactively develop a thorough business understanding, and empathise with all your stakeholders (CEO or a field agent). Critically you’ll need to envision best practice and build enthusiasm for the solutions you and the wider tech team want to bring to table.
• Create systems that people love. Together with cross-functional teams, ensure implementations of process and system excite our users and make them want to use it.
• You will lead the adoption of PEG’s products across our four markets.. You’ll be responsible for moving entire country teams, field teams and clients from their existing tools and processes to our internally defined products.
• Drive product analytics to understand feature usage, system literacy, and optimization.
• Act as a cross-functional leader to bring the organization together to meet business goals through Product.
• Own the product roadmap and communicate with C-level staff, board members, and other stakeholders.

This role would ideally suit an ambitious young management professional seeking their first director-level challenge