Head of Design at M-KOPA Solar

M-KOPA is seeking a Head of Design for the M-KOPA software product suite: chiefly the Android customer app and Android sales app, but also our CRM and other internal tools. The role will report to the Director of Product Management. 

Responsibilities and skills:

• You will own all product design at M-KOPA.
• You will keep our users at the center of our product design.
• You'll be responsible for guiding the careers of your team members, working closely with each of them to help them realize their full potential. You are at the stage in your career where you are excited, perhaps still excited, to directly coach and mentor other designers.
• As a systems-level design thinker, you have informed opinions about how agile software companies should position, structure, and implement product design and user-centered design. You like discussing these opinions. You persuasively advocate for improvements that will clear the path for your team to do their best work.
• You have learned how to decide what you should do yourself and what you should delegate.
• You only accept high-quality work.
• You will help shape overall product strategy by balancing the needs of users, product management, commercial teams, and development.
• You have learned how to lead design critiques and not take design feedback personally. You are looking forward to helping other designers learn this same skill.
• You will collaborate closely with our product managers and engineering teams during each sprint to make judgment calls as business and engineering constraints arise, with a bias towards shipping valuable work each sprint and iteratively improving on it later.
• You will work closely with in-market research teams to plan for user research, interpret the findings, and then show the vision for the product.
• To start, you will still do product-level design work and are glad for the opportunity to both set the direction for the team and at times get all the way into the details of the work you take on yourself.
• You enjoy communicating visually and you also understand that design thinking is a lot more than making visuals.
• You have well-informed opinions about working with design tools. For what it’s worth, we presently use Figma, Maze, and Zeplin.
• You feel the urge to improve this job description.

Required Experience

• Relevant work experience: 7 years UX design, including 4 years on native Android apps
• Portfolio: UX-focused work samples for mobile and web applications
• Languages: English (Spoken: fluent | Written: fluent)
• Location: Live in or be willing to travel 6-8 weeks per year to our target markets – presently Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and Ghana

Preferred Experience:

• Education: a degree in art, design, engineering, or related field
• Relevant work experience: 10+ years UX design, 3+ years leading a design team