Who we are
M-KOPA is the world’s leading pay-as-you-go “PayGo’” energy provider to off grid homes. We’ve developed a better way to provide affordable, safe and clean energy to millions of people. It was the first company to launch a SIM-enabled pay-as-yougo solar system anywhere in the world. M-KOPA is now one of the fastest growing power providers in Africa, connecting solar to 500 new homes each day. Every night, hundreds of thousands of homes and 2.5 million people in East Africa are using an M-KOPA Solar home system.
From this foundation, M-KOPA has launched a highly successful PayGo phone product in partnership with Samsung and Nokia. Our phone is a key new product line for the company. The phone can be our customer’s first stand-alone product, or it can be a purchased following good payment history with one of our solar products.
In June 2017, M-KOPA was named on MIT Technology Review’s 2017 list of 50 Smartest Companies. In March 2016, M-KOPA emerged boldest at the Financial Times Arcelor Mittal – Boldness In Business Awards in the developing markets category. In February 2016, M-KOPA was recognized as the Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets at the Global Mobile Awards. In 2015, M-KOPA was recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the Top 50 Companies Changing the World and won the Zayed Future Energy Prize.
M-KOPA is backed by leading growth-stage investors including:
• The CDC group - UK’s development Finance Institution that has invested in 1,245 businesses throughout Africa and South Asia. They were founded in 1948, making them the world's oldest DFI.
• Generation Investment Management LLP (GIM) - A London-based investment management firm with over $10bn assets under management and an investment style that focuses on both commercial and sustainability factors.
Generation was founded in 2004 by former US Vice President Al Gore and former Goldman Sachs Asset Management CEO David Blood.
• Stanbic Bank – One of the leading financial services organizations that aims to be the leading corporate and investment banking business in, for and across Africa.
The role
M-KOPA is seeking a
Product Designer
for the M-KOPA software product suite: chiefly the mobile app, but also our CRM and other internal tools. While there has always been software that allows M-KOPA to control the devices that we offer, the M-KOPA mobile app represents a fundamental shift towards customer facing software products. Thus, the product design discipline is new at the company. The person in this role gets to establish the design discipline and grow it. The role will report to the Director of Product Management.
Responsibilities
You will be the owner of product design at M-KOPA.
You enjoy communicating visually. You are comfortable refining your thoughts from conceptual sketches to wireframes, to clickable prototypes, to early designs, to final development ready vector files with all associated assets.
You will hear big ideas from many corners of the business and distill them into well crafted UX and UI.
You are comfortable showing and then balancing the trade-offs between branding, aesthetics, standards, usability, and function.
You know what not to compromise and how compromise helps you and everyone else win.
You have learned how to conduct design critiques and not take design feedback personally.
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 market research teams to understand user needs and then elucidate the vision for the product.
Your work will be woven into our agile product process, in most cases preceding it and showing us the way forward.
You lead by example, modeling Design best practices for the product team and the business. You are comfortable advocating for process improvements that will clear the path for you to do your best work.
You probably have well informed opinions about and experience working with design tools. We presently use Figma.com and Zeplin for producing design files, prototypes for feedback, and sharing design specifications with engineering.
Required Experience:
Required education: No requirement
Required relevant work experience: 2 years, including 1 year or several projects on native mobile apps
Required languages: English (Spoken: fluent | Written: fluent)
Preferred Experience:
Preferred education: a degree in art or design
Preferred relevant work experience: 4 years, mostly on native mobile apps
Preferred languages: Fluent in English and proficient in a national language from one of our target markets
PLEASE NOTE:
M-KOPA Solar is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to assembling a diverse, broadly trained staff. Women, minorities and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply. In compliance with applicable laws and in furtherance of its commitment to fostering an environment that welcomes and embraces diversity, M-KOPA does not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, creed, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy and parenting status), disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status or genetic information in its programs or activities, including employment.
M-KOPA, as a policy, does not collect/charge any money as a pre-employment or post-employment requirement. This means that we never ask for ‘recruitment fees’, ‘processing fees’, ‘interview fees’ or any other kind of money in exchange for offer letters or interviews at any time during the hiring process.
Job Requirements
Required education
: Bachelor's degree
Required relevant work experience
: 3 years
Required languages:
English (Spoken: fluent | Written: fluent)
Mandatory attachments
Please have a scan or photo of these documents ready when you start the application:
Self-prepared CV file
- the employer wants to see a CV that you have prepared yourself
Education certificate
- the official certificate for your highest education
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