Technical Operations Manager

About ENGIE Energy Access

ENGIE Energy Access is one of the leading Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGo) and mini-grids solutions provider in Africa, with a mission to deliver affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy solutions and life-changing services with exceptional customer experience. The company is a result of the integration of Fenix International, ENGIE Mobisol and ENGIE PowerCorner; and develops innovative, off-grid solar solutions for homes, public services, and businesses, enabling customers and distribution partners access to clean, affordable energy. The PAYGo solar home systems are financed through affordable installments from $0.14 per day and the Mini grids foster economic development by enabling electrical productive use and triggering business opportunities for entrepreneurs in rural communities. With over 1,700 employees, operations in 9 countries across Africa (Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia), over 1 million customers and more than 5 million lives impacted so far, ENGIE Energy Access aims to remain the leading clean energy company, serving millions of customers across Africa by 2025.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/engieenergyaccess/

Job Purpose/Mission 

Majority of the EEA’s business line product value chain activities are centered around the quality of the product and the ability to serve customers fast. The backbone of these capacities revolves around the circularity agenda including repair, refurbishment, technical centers management, tools and diagnosis, waste, and end of life management (disposal and recycling), repurposing, among other important pillars, reverse logistics management, new product introductions, technical systems support (internal database) among others.

The Technical Operations Manager role is therefore positioned to propagate excellence within African Operations in these critical aspects by creating metrics to monitor operational standards, setting benchmark to compare and identify gaps in processes, procedures, and methods, identifying opportunities for cost optimization and standardization, coach in-country operations teams to adopt improvements, lean processes, and best practices.

This is an exciting role which requires creativity and tactical visioning as well as operational execution and working cross-functionally with our teams in African countries.

Responsibilities:

• Lead implementation of technical improvements within the circularity pillars of EEA including repair, refurbishment, tech center management (tools, processes), testing and diagnosis.
• Technical support for deployment of tooling changes or NPI advised from R&D hardware – create and communicate processes and procedures related to all countries and implement with the technical teams in the countries.
• Support New Product Introductions (NPI) to all countries by creating content, serialization of new products (serial-number-board), ensuring readiness of technical centers tools and systems to launch, and disseminating to heads of operations and technical teams in the country through regular trainings.
• Work closely with related teams in R&D, China Operations, Product Management to define diagnosis, refurbishment and repair strategies for existing and new products. Work with countries to examine and implement centralized vs. decentralized diagnosis and refurbishment strategies to reduce turn-around-time and increase customer satisfaction.
• Track cost optimization opportunities on core processes in the product value chain of African operations including technical operations and capacity utilization, set up of tech centers and improvement of necessary tools and processes to bring most value to EEA on IQC/assembly, repairs, and refurbishment, testing and diagnosis, increase productivity to use more refurbished hardware for warranty - in liaison with the QA and CX team. 
• Support the improvement of Inventory control tools and procedures in the operating countries especially in the areas of technical operations, together with accounting and country operations heads, lead preparation and full adoption of inventory control guidelines for technical operations.
• Create policies, processes, and procedures to share tech center best practices to achieve highest levels of operational excellence and standardization across the tech centers. Maintain repository for critical technical operations related policies, guidelines, and procedures. Update and upgrade any as required periodically.
• Track and maintain consolidated records of product end-of-life (EOL) for each country; use appropriate standards to assist and advise on EOL management including finding, due diligence, auditing, and contracting of suitable recycling partners to work with EEA. Employ technical skills to find alternative use / repurposing of EOL items to reduce disposal and e-waste.
• Track and improve the reverse logistics with countries to ensure efficiency in returning of swapped products to the tech center for refurbishment and turning them around to the field for reuse. Reduce the turnaround time.
• Develop and implement standard score card metrics to monitor the health of operations of technical operations including backlog reduction, repair and refurbishment throughput rates, product quality metrics including pass/fail, data gathering and maintenance in critical tools, and disposal / e-waste management.
• Coach and train country operations teams on improvements / best practices as needed to elevate tech center activities.

At EEA, we have high expectations for our managers. Each manager plays a key role in creating an exceptional experience not only for our customers but for every person on our team. Our managers help EEA realize our ambitious goals while developing their own leadership skills and facilitating growth for their direct reports. 

We believe that great managers:

• Deliver ambitious results: As a high-performing and accountable leader, you create an enabling environment for effective action and bold decision which contribute to successful delivery of results.
• Act with integrity: As an ethical leader you are honest, respectful, objective, and transparent. You create and build upon a foundation of trust and openness.
• Inspire and mentor the team: As an inspirational leader you walk the talk. You empower and coach your team with trust and humility.
• Are accessible: as an accessible leader, you develop and maintain deep connections with stakeholders through approachability and active listening.
• Ensure diversity and inclusion: as an inclusive leader, you ensure diversity and foster a sense of belonging.

Knowledge and skills:

Experience:

• Minimum 4 years of experience in operations/operations excellence/operations improvements/supply chain related fields. 
• Ability to get hands-on, analyze processes, determine gaps, and formulate solutions to improve operations. 
• Technical knowledge of formulating policies, processes and procedures suiting multiple operations. 
• Ability to work with cross-cultural teams and bring together diverse teams – cut through barriers to achieve compliance.
• Stakeholder management and ability to interact with key external partners in recycling / disposal.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in operations/operations excellence/operations improvements/supply chain / engineering / technical projects management related fields.
• Professional certifications in lean / six sigma, engineering is an added advantage.
• Working knowledge of kaizen processes, project management, and improvements are also important.

Language(s): 

• English
• French & Portuguese are a plus.

 Technology:

• Advanced MS Office User (Excel, PowerPoint, Word)
• Knowledge of Sales and Operations tools and ERP systems, e.g., SAP, NAV for supply chain.
• Knowledge on data analysis to support critical KPIs and metrics including the use of analytical tools.

ENGIE is an equal opportunity employer, promoting diversity and committed to creating an inclusive environment for all. All applications are screened based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without any regard to origin, age, name, sexual identity, orientation or preference, religion, marital status, health, disability, political opinions, union involvement or citizenship. Our differences are our strengths! 

 A significant exposure to ethics risk given the geographical footprint (9 African markets) and type of activities (B2C, with large sales force on the field), this hire is critical for business continuity.