Openings at Kyosk Digital Services

Role Profile:

Kyosk is looking for a passionate Software Engineering Manager to provide leadership to a team of software engineers who are developing solutions on the leading edge of innovation in Africa. The successful candidate will be responsible for all aspects of a team’s performance and success while forging strong, collaborative relationships with other product and technology stakeholders.  

As a Software Engineering Manager, you’ll join our growing team of Product and Technology professionals who share a passion for leveraging technology to empower informal retailers across the African continent. You’ll work with teams from multiple countries across the organization to imagine and build innovative solutions for Kyosk’s customers and internal teams.

To be successful in this role you will need to be a great communicator, innovator, influencer, and an analytical problem solver. You will need to think and act fast, deal with ambiguity and constraints, and help to develop ideas into products that work on a global scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Leadership: Be the leader who your team looks up to. Improve processes to make your team more effective. Develop knowledge and domain expertise. Take ownership of what you and the team build and coordinate efforts across the team to ensure efficient completion of tasks. Eliminate obstacles that prevent your team from performing optimally.
• People Management: Actively seek to build a great team. Ensure effective recruitment, training and development programs are adopted to promote productivity, retention, motivation and morale. Manage the career path and goals of your team members, conducting regular 1-on-1s and having monthly performance dialogues. Review candidate profiles and conduct interviews keeping Kyosk’s growth and culture objectives in mind.
• Performance Management: Set and review performance and development goals for your team. Identify timeframes and readiness for promotion of direct reports; solicit cross functional feedback in support of promotions and employee rewards. Coach and mentor engineers, showing them the next steps in their careers. Craft a winning culture built on collaboration and shared accomplishments while having fun along the way.
• Integrator: As a senior member of Kyosk’s Core engineering team you will work to harmoniously integrate the various engineering teams through the consistent adoption of tools, methodologies and processes. You will create the glue that holds the engineering teams together in their ways of working.
• Capacity Planning: Establish staffing needs and a hiring strategy by working collaboratively with the broader Product and Technology management team. Balance the size and composition of your teams against the expected deliverables while ensuring optimal team performance.
• Strategic Thinking: Plan and execute long term strategies that benefit the team and their product(s). Work closely with your manager and other senior members of the Product and Engineering team to ensure that the roadmap is clearly understood and translated into requirements that the Core team should drive forward. 
• Technical Delivery: Take ownership of the progress, costs, and quality of delivering engineering outcomes. Adopt, enforce, and contribute to the agile processes that define Kyosk’s way of working to deliver multiple product releases at scale. Own and refine the processes that your team uses to build and support products within the business. 
• Technical Monitoring: Build a deep understanding of how our products work and are built. Though you will not be expected to code regularly or at all, you need to grasp code and architecture concerns. Identify and track metrics that can be used to ensure objectives are met and recommend process improvements. Understand engineering metrics and seek to improve them.
• Process Improvement: Regularly monitor, determine and recommend methods to streamline and improve development processes and procedures. Spearhead various research and development initiatives to identify opportunities for new projects and improved processes.
• Stakeholder Management: Prepare and deliver various engineering-related presentations, both internally and externally. Act as the point of contact with the business and technical leadership communicating their priorities to the team and vice versa.

Minimum Requirements & Key Skills:

• 7+ years of software development or technical product management experience with the full software development life-cycle: design, coding, testing, mocking, deployment and maintenance of software to real production environments;
• 3+ years as a software engineering manager with people management responsibilities and a track record of hiring and growing a talented team of engineers;
• Experience working with micro services, Kubernetes/Docker, and GCP/AWS services;
• Experience working with Agile methodologies, Scrum and demonstrated experience in managing end-to-end software development lifecycles.
• Proficiency with tools of the product and engineering trade for issue tracking, technical documentation, diagramming, roadmapping, project management, CI/CD, etc.
• The ability to align people behind a common goal. You can explain and materialize objectives of the team;
• Working knowledge of large-scale service-oriented infrastructure and the design of scalable, highly available systems in the real world;
• Strong overall knowledge of development and quality assurance methodologies;
• Ability to successfully collaborate with multiple technical functions in the areas of infrastructure, devops, architects and other software engineers;
• Outstanding organizational, communication, interpersonal and relationship building skills

Desired Technical Competencies

• Conversational knowledge of modern programming language and frameworks like Java, Angular, C++, Android, Python, etc;
• Experience organizing, leading, and growing an engineering team or organization from scratch preferred;
• Experience in e-commerce, payments, and/or distribution of FMCG products is a plus
• Exposure to micro services, Kubernetes/Docker, and GCP/AWS services strongly preferred;
• You’ve worked with 3rd parties to integrate and scale products and services for rapid product growth.
• You have a genuine knack for numbers and how they are represented, and you are super comfortable with Excel and/or Google Sheets.

Desired Behavioral Competencies

• You have experience in handling the pressure of fast-paced environments typical of a tech startup environment where you wear multiple hats and have access to limited resources 
• You have a strong desire for continuous improvement
• You can work under pressure, with tight timelines and ambitious deadlines
• You have a passion for digital products 
• You can stay motivated through difficult challenges, and occasional long hours
• Your passion is contagious, and you use it to inspire the rest of the team
• You have equal empathy for internal users, and our target market of informal retailers
• You have a strong work ethic and exhibit genuine care for the team and their products, with a willingness to go to any necessary length to ensure their success
• You have integrity: You do what you say you will do and make no excuses. 
• You develop a deep understanding and respect for what each team member is responsible for, and trust them to do their job
• Your confidence and experience make you trust your instinct and communicate persuasively. You know when to make decisions (even when others might disagree) vs when to build consensus, and you can articulate the strategy and business rationale behind your decisions.
• You are comfortable taking the blame if something goes wrong, and equally quick to give credit to the rest of the team when it goes well
• You are detail-oriented, process-driven, and organized, and can stay two steps ahead of the work your team is doing
• You understand devops as culture not as a role, and seek to automate manual processes where it makes sense.

Apply by: Oct. 31, 2023

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Role Profile

The Regional Commercial Manager - Alcoholic Beverages, will lead the organization in income generation activities for the sales and commercial sector. He/she will set targets, drive income generation and work across the organization to manage the delivery of sales and commercial Business expectations.

The role holder will have overall responsibility of the business’ day-to-day and long-term sales and commercial activities; coordinate the sales and commercial teams and collaborate with key Line Managers to resolve sales and commercial issues.

Key Responsibilities:

• Strategic Execution: Lead the development of the overall Sales and Commercial Strategy, goals and objectives for the business and manage its implementation; including developing existing relationships with key industrial partners to create new sales and commercial opportunities. Develop and oversee the implementation of plans for expansion and business development as well as strategies to accelerate business growth.
• Business Modelling: Direct the extensive understanding of business model, growth models and identification of sales and commercial opportunities. Implement robust new business processes across the organization aimed at identifying new sales and commercial opportunities and efficiencies in line with the business goals. Implement a rigorous analysis of existing customer needs, trends and forecasts within the value chain in search of value-adding and new service opportunities.
• Performance Management: Oversee revenue generation and diversification of income streams for the business while encouraging business growth and performance. Develop metrics to monitor the performance of sales and commercial activities; Analyse the business performance, including profitability, revenue pricing and cost of goods in comparison to market prices. Utilise analytics to create action plans that are based on data and statistics and interpret business results against targets, reporting the results to the senior management team on the performance. Oversee the performance of the sales team in outlet recruitment, retention and route optimization to ensure that our customers are regularly serviced and buy across the portfolio.
• Business Intelligence: Advise the framework for business intelligence reporting; support the wider business needs with compiling data and information to assist with continuous improvement developments and improving business performance. Review data to identify trends or opportunities to reduce costs, improve revenue and improve business performance.
• Business Advisory: Play a lead role in advising the around pricing of sales and commercial contracts. Coordinate with the Purchasing team to develop risk assessments and pricing structures for products to work toward commercial efforts. Identify cost-effective and sales and commercial opportunities for service & process improvements and support their implementation in the business.
• Budget Management: Manage the expenditure of the sales and commercial budget across the year, oversee expenses and revenue to create financial returns and business growth. Support financial planning and budgeting for the business based on market & revenue data and analytics.
• Stakeholder Management: Develop strong relationships with different departments within the company to ensure everyone is working toward the same targets and goals. Ensure alignment with the sales and commercial strategies that reflect immediate business requirements and potential business development opportunities.
• People Management: Provide leadership to the direct reports including scheduling frequent one on one meetings, conducting monthly performance appraisals and driving a high-performance culture within the team. Support the recruitment of sales and commercial team members including role & success profile definition and interviewing. Contribute to a sustainable positive workforce environment and culture through collaborative leadership, open communication and teamwork.
• Sales and Operation Planning: Provide leadership to the S&OP process ensuring that markets through bottom-up approach put together demand plans per SKU/Brand/Category in line with the Business growth plans and track weekly performance to ensure targets are achieved.
• 3rd Party Management: Monitor the performance of 3rd party sales companies in contract with Kyosk and ensure that contracts are renewed on time and key performance metrics are entrenched with weekly/monthly/quarterly reviews. Ensure that teams seconded to Kyosk from the 3rd parties are as per the agreed caliber and performance reviews, coaching and training are done as per the annual calendar.

Minimum Requirements & Key Skills:

• A bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Marketing or a related subject/field;
• A master’s degree will be an added advantage;
• A minimum of 7 years relevant experience with at least 3 years in a similar position in Alcoholic,Retail, FMCG or manufacturing;
• Strong financial analysis experience and sales/commercial (acumen) experience including financial modelling is a plus;
• Extensive understanding of business growth models and the ability to foresee sales and commercial opportunities;
• Excellent relational skills, working tirelessly to build and maintain beneficial partnerships with key stakeholders;
• Strategic development and critical thinking skills with experience supporting the setting financial targets, developing budgets, and monitoring compliance;
• Ability to collaborate with and coordinate diverse teams (marketing, sales, customer service, etc.);
• Working knowledge of how to conduct market research and analysis including the creation of detailed business plans;
• Understand existing customer relationships and their requirements to ensure they are being met;
• Outstanding commercial, sales and business development skills and proven ability to develop commercial strategies that improve business performance; 
• Proven success of managing/implementing new business pipelines;
• Ability to manage multiple projects at the same time. 

Competencies & Skills

• Strategic Orientation & Thinking;
• Sales and Commercial Acumen;
• Entrepreneurial Skills;
• Stakeholder Management;
• Analytical Thinking;
• Tech Savvy.

Apply by: Oct. 31, 2023