Hardware Team Lead

About KOKO Networks
KOKO Networks is a venture-backed climate-tech company with 1,200+ employees across East Africa & India. Our mission is to imagine and deliver technology that improves life in the world’s fastest growing cities. We offer a fast-paced and highly collaborative work environment with significant opportunities for professional growth. Our core lines of business currently include: (1) KOKO Fuel, an ultra-clean liquid bioethanol cooking fuel solution delivered via a network of smart fuel ATMs and leveraging existing downstream liquid fuels infrastructure; (2) KOKO Climate, which retails the emissions reductions that occur from switching households from deforestation-based charcoal to KOKO Fuel; and (3) KOKO Club, a tech-enabled, direct-to-consumer, instant fulfillment retail platform operated in partnership with neighborhood retailers. In 2021, KOKO was selected as the world’s leading emerging markets climate technology solution by FT/IFC.

Your Role

KOKO provides its customers with smart delivery of fuel and other products through its unique last mile distribution network, enabled by an ecosystem of proprietary integrated hardware and software products. As KOKO expands its reach to multiple countries, we are looking for an experienced Hardware Design Team Lead to provide technical ownership and leadership to a team of multidisciplinary engineers in the ongoing development of our IoT based hardware products that underpin the distribution activities.

Aside from being an expert in your core skills areas, you should be comfortable leading and coaching to shape the team's output as needed. You will act as an individual contributor/subject matter expert in either the mechanical, electronics or embedded software domains and have a working understanding of others in order to tie the product development process together smoothly.

What you will do

• Work with business, product and engineering stakeholders to capture new requirements and learnings from KOKO’s operations
• Deliver on the technical aspects of KOKO’s product roadmap to address key opportunities, issues and risks identified.
• Oversee the complete technical development lifecycle for one or more of KOKO’s IoT enabled hardware products (design, test, production, deployment, monitoring and improvement).
• Support the process of production setup for prototyping, new production, mass production and change management in collaboration with internal and external teams.
• Help define test strategies for design, production and operational needs.
• Lead an engineering team through technical planning and regular meetings to schedule and remove technical blockers
• Work closely with operational support teams to identify and resolve issues experienced in production or in the field.
• Liaise with suppliers and equipment vendors to source the right parts at the best cost
• Help build the engineering culture at KOKO, mentor and guide your team of engineers and instil engineering excellence into the team.

What You Will Bring to KOKO

• At least three years experience as a team lead on products spanning hardware, electronics and firmware, and five years experience as an individual contributor any of the following three domains:
• Mechanical design in plastics & metals from concept, drawing (Solidworks), tooling and volume production
• Circuit design and simulation, schematic entry and PCBA layout using industry standard tools (OrCAD)
• Firmware development for hardware products using C and RTOS
• An understanding of DFM (design for manufacturing) and DFT (design for testing) to ensure successful medium-high volume production
• Understanding of manufacturing processes and best practices
• Strong skills in project planning for hardware products in a waterfall, stage-gated, environment.
• Experience with Jira/Confluence for task management and documentation as well as git or equivalent for source code maintenance
• Empathy for your colleagues, encouraging team members to think creatively while knowing where to intervene to tackle tough problems and navigate conflicts.
• An excellent communicator, across cultures with a 'can-do' attitude and an engaging team leader
• Ability to travel internationally when needed

Nice to haves- Knowledge of automated dispensing systems design for liquids and solids.

• Knowledge of fuel distribution industry
• Understanding of the wider IoT tech stack (MQTT, security etc..)

What we offer

• Competitive salary plus a quarterly cash bonus
• Annual compensation reviews - we reward great work
• Medicare for you and your family
• 21 days of annual leave plus public holidays plus examination leave
• Hybrid working model - allowing you to split your time between in-person collaboration at one of our offices and working remotely
• Ongoing investment in you and your skills, incl. full access to over 5,000 online courses
• The right equipment for the job - a choice of MacBook, Windows, or Linux laptop

We believe that our people are critical for our ambitious growth plans in Kenya and beyond. We want to build an organisation where people thrive, feel included, grow professionally, and enjoy having high impact through their work.

If you share our passion for technology and our vision for global impact, we strongly encourage you to apply!

KOKO is committed to gender and racial diversity in the workplace. We encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply!