Corporate Overview

BURN Manufacturing designs produces and distributes Africa’s best-selling, fuel-efficient biomass, electric, hybrid, and liquid fuel cooking appliances. Not only do our products save money, fuel, and natural resources, but they also dramatically reduce harmful indoor smoke emissions which can cause significant health problems, even death.

With more than 1.2Millon+ stoves sold since commencing manufacturing operations in 2013, BURN has established itself as Africa’s most trusted cookstove brand thanks to our unwavering commitment to innovative research and design, manufacturing excellence, and customer care.

BURN is now the only vertically integrated modern cookstove company in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our solar-powered facility currently has a capacity of 45,000 stoves per month. We are proud to employ 400 team members throughout Kenya and East Africa, and support a workforce that is 50 percent female, thus empowering women in roles traditionally considered to be “for men only.”

Among our national and global honors, we have received the 2018 Bloomberg New Energy Pioneers Award for being among the world’s leaders in clean energy solutions, the 2018 Swiss Energy and Climate Summit Award for our pitch on the impact of clean-burning stoves, and the 2015 Ashden Green Energy International Award for empowering women with new economic opportunities.

Job description

About the Role

The Product Manager - Cooking Appliances position presents an exciting opportunity to roll out an innovative new cooking product into the market. This role will work in collaboration with the Head of Product and play an active role in all product-related matters. This includes, but is not limited to product innovation, product design, product development, and project management.

BURN has been developing, testing, and bringing to market new cooking products for 10+ years in Kenya. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to join a growing organization and contribute to a fast-moving company committed to improving economic, environmental, and social outcomes in East Africa.

We offer a role with significant responsibility:

Specific roles and responsibilities may change as the position, and the company, and the product, evolve. This is a flexible and demanding post with numerous associated responsibilities. The key areas identified are:

Roles & Responsibilities

• Work closely with market research department to understand user needs, define product vision, and advocate for the voice of the customer throughout the product lifecycle.
• Use information from customers provided by market research ensure products developed incorporate these ideas.
• Manage the product to achieve goals and achieve planned launch timelines.
• Work closely with the engineering team during the development cycle to make judgment calls as engineering constraints arise.
• Manage supplier communication contracting and integration of results into the existing system and team.
• Improve the currently available solutions from a UI/UX and technical perspective
• Assisting Senior Management Team in developing a comprehensive product road map that illustrates both, long-term horizons as well more immediate product goals. 
• Ensuring that this road map is coordinated with commercial strategy as it pertains to expanding markets, partnerships, and impact sectors. 
• Acting as a launching agent, to make sure the selected projects get launched into R&D 
• Working closely with CCO to evaluate new market potential and prioritize product development efforts accordingly.  
• Ensure we are solving the right problems by sourcing input from multiple channels and analyzing effectively to drive maximum impact. 
• Collect ideas for new products and major variants throughout the organization and beyond. 
• Ensure there is always a buffer of pre-evaluated and prioritized ideas waiting for capacity in the R&D team (between gate 0 and 1) 
• Performing and coordinating market research activities to identify to new product potential in existing, new, and untapped markets (includes user research, competitive analysis, etc.) 
• Product and Project scoping 
• Continuing to implement product development process in NPD as new products launch throughout 2021. 
• Serving as a bridge between key NPD, Finance, and Commercial business functions.
• Organizing multiple decision and evaluation criteria/timelines such as: best market entry time, intellectual property strategy in new markets/new products, product-market fit, the regulatory environment of new markets impacting product development, size of opportunities, etc. 

 Skills and experience

• You bring to the table: 3-5 years of relevant experience in EA, and product management.
• You are an excellent communicator, a product person; a people’s person and you know how to set priorities and utilize your time in an effective manner.
• You are not shy to ask questions and are always striving to deliver the best results, considering the complexity of the system and its requirements.

Compensation includes benefits matching the level of the candidate.

Qualified women candidates are encouraged to apply.

How to apply

If you believe you can clearly demonstrate your abilities to meet the criteria given above, please submit your application with a detailed CV to the email:[email protected]