Hardware & Firmware Release Specialist at Jaza Energy Tanzania

Jaza is working to power Sub-Saharan Africa, where there are over 600,000,000 people living without electricity. Cheap energy is the key to productive economic growth, and we believe the future needs energy abundance. Our job is done when every person on the planet has access to unlimited affordable energy.

Jaza believes that a mix of people, technology and capital can connect Jaza’s market to the future of how people live and work around the world. The company builds solar powered shops, called hubs, that charge batteries customers use to power their homes. A single hub serves hundreds of households. The company employs women from each Jaza community to run the service, empowering the Jaza team to become leaders, entrepreneurs, and drivers of economic growth within their communities. We’re working on several additional products to deliver solar energy to homes and businesses via Hubs and Jaza Stars.

Our hardware engineering and manufacturing teams are based in China and Canada, and we collaborate with teams in Nigeria, Tanzania and beyond. We believe personal collaboration is critical to building the best hardware products, so for this role we expect someone who can spend a bulk of their time in markets like Tanzania and Nigeria.

For more information on what we are building, check out www.jazaenergy.com.

About The Role

This role will be a key gatekeeper role to ensure that the hardware and firmware developed by Global Engineering teams ( China & Canada) are ready for release into the markets Jaza operates in across Africa.

You will be the glue between Global Engineering and Country Operations, and you will use your operational experience to decide whether a release candidate build is sufficiently mature to be deployed into our markets without negatively impacting business operations.

You will build the release schedule in collaboration with the Engineering and Product teams, and you will be responsible for scheduling and executing the phased deployments into all operational markets.

You will maintain and develop an in-office test lab setup in Dar or Morogoro ( replicating our local hubs)

You will support proper configuration of in-office test lab setups in other markets (Ibadan, Nigeria initially)

You will write operational release notes based on your review of engineering Release Notes and your own testing of the product behavior in the in-office test lab environment.

You will be responsible for communication of all functional changes to local market teams prior to deployment to ensure there is no operational or business disruption.

This position can be based in Dar-es-Salaam or Morogoro, Tanzania.

This position requires on-going travel within Africa (20%, Tanzania and Nigeria initially) to assess quality of releases in each operating market, as well as occasional international travel to China (5%) to build awareness of our engineering and supply chain context.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

5+ years of operational experience with Solar, Batteries or consumer electronics in African markets

Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or related or equivalent work experience

Familiarity with the product development lifecycle for Hardware and Embedded Software products.

Experience with data analysis, configuration management, and remote deployment tools.

Excellent interpersonal skills including oral and writing communication with Chinese partners in English.

Preferred Qualifications

3+ years of direct experience in Test&Release for high-volume hardware products (10,000+ deployed devices managed)

8+ years of senior operational experience with Solar, Batteries or consumer electronics in African markets

Master’s degree in Electronic Engineering, Computer Science or related or equivalent work experience

Fluency in spoken and written Mandarin are a plus for this role.

Must have skills

• 5+ years of experience with solar batteries or consumer electronics
• knowledge of product lifecycle of hardware and software products
• Experience with data analysis, configuration management, and remote deployment tools.
• oral and writing communication with Chinese partners in English.