Sun King

Off-grid solar home systems provider

Senior Product Designer - UX Designer

Product DesignUpdated on Nov 13

Full-timeNo salary listed

About the Job

Requirements

A portfolio of shipped product work is mandatory, with two or three in-depth cases describing the problem, attempts, actions, and outcomes after launch.
Five to seven years of digital product design experience, including meaningful mobile-design experience.
Experience designing for users with different needs and contexts, ideally in emerging markets, field operations, fintech, or last-mile distribution.
Ability to structure and evaluate ambiguous problems.
Clear written communication to explain design choices to non-designers.
Proactive, hands-on approach, including personally conducting research, design, and testing.
Professional working proficiency in English is mandatory.
Expertise in Figma, including components, variables, auto layout, and prototyping.
Hands-on experience building or maintaining a design system.
Practical research skills in usability testing, contextual inquiry, and field interviews, conducted personally rather than outsourced.
Knowledge of Android design conventions and Material Design, applied with judgement.
Knowledge of accessibility and legibility fundamentals, including contrast, touch targets, text scaling, and patterns for low-literacy users.
Data literacy to read funnel, adoption, or A/B test results and act on them.
Comfort using AI tools in the design workflow for concepts, copy, research synthesis, and prototypes.

Responsibilities

Spend time in the field with Energy Officers, customers, and operations teams to observe their work directly.
Run usability tests, contextual interviews, and concept tests in market.
Turn research findings into actionable choices for the team.
Design end-to-end journeys for sales, onboarding, collections, servicing, and assistance.
Map offline steps as well as on-screen steps in customer and agent journeys.
Simplify flows that have become complicated through feature additions.
Take visual design from rough concept to production-ready screens, maintaining typography, spacing, hierarchy, and legibility on small screens in bright sunlight.
Make interfaces teachable so new agents can be productive on day one.
Design for low-end Android devices, small screens, limited storage, intermittent connectivity, offline states, synchronization, and failure recovery.
Design for low digital literacy and multiple languages, accounting for longer translated text.
Own the shared component library and design standards, and keep them aligned with what engineering ships.
Document design patterns so designers and engineers can apply them independently.
Build clickable prototypes to answer open questions early; use AI tools to generate variants, draft copy, and explore directions; test prototypes with users and revise based on feedback.
Produce handoff-ready files, specifications, and states that engineers can build from without guesswork, covering empty states, errors, loading, long names, missing data, and poor network conditions.
Review builds before release and maintain implementation quality.
Define success measures before launch, including task completion, time on task, errors, and drop-off rates.
Work with product and data teams to assess adoption and funnel data after release and address identified problems.
Work with product managers, engineers, and market operations teams throughout the product lifecycle.
Bring evidence to design discussions, keep stakeholders informed, and advocate for design decisions where appropriate.
Travel as required to Sun King markets, including Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Myanmar, with regular field visits to agents and customers.

Desired Qualifications

A local market language such as Swahili, French, Hausa, Yoruba, or Luganda for field research.
Experience designing offline-first or intermittently connected applications.
Front-end familiarity with HTML, CSS, or React sufficient to discuss implementation costs with engineers.
Motion design or illustration experience.
Service design experience covering journeys across online and offline steps.
Exposure to pay-as-you-go, asset finance, microfinance, or emerging-market lending.
Hands-on experience with SQL.

Job Location: Nairobi, Kenya or Lagos, Nigeria

About the role:
The Senior Product Designer (UX Designer), based in Nairobi or Lagos. You will report to the Head of Product, Enterprise Products.

You will own the experience of the products our customers, field agents and our staff teams use every day. That covers the apps our Energy Officers use to sell, onboard and service customers. It also covers the products our customers use to buy, pay for and manage their energy. It covers the tools our staff uses to manage the inventory, sales, collections, incentives, etc every day. And it covers the design system that holds all of it.

The people you design for are not like you. Many are first-time smartphone users. They work outdoors, on low-end Android devices, on patchy networks, often in their second or third language. A design succeeds here when an agent can close a sale in a village at the end of a long day. It is not judged by how the screen looks in a portfolio.

We also want an AI-first approach to design. You reach for AI to explore concepts, generate variants and pressure-test copy. You prototype before writing a specification. You ask “can AI do this better” first, not as an afterthought.

This role covers design end to end. Research, flows, interaction design, visual design, prototyping and handoff. We expect all of it done the AI-first way: faster, sharper, and built to scale.

1. Research with the people who actually use our products

Spend time in the field with Energy Officers, customers and operations teams. Watch them work. Do not rely on second-hand reports.
Run usability tests, contextual interviews and concept tests in market.
Turn what you learn into choice the team acts on, not decks that get filed away.

2. Flows and interaction design

Design the end-to-end journeys behind sales, onboarding, collections, servicing and assist.
Map the offline steps as well as the on-screen ones. Most of our journeys start on paper or in conversation.
Simplify flows that have grown complicated over years of feature additions.

3. Visual design and craft

Take work from rough concept to production-ready screens.
Hold a high bar on typography, spacing, ranking and legibility in bright sunlight on small screens.
Make the interface teachable. A new agent should be productive on day one.

4. Design for real constraints

Design for low-end Android devices, small screens and limited storage.
Design for intermittent flow. Offline states, sync and failure recovery are part of the design, not an engineering afterthought.
Design for low digital literacy and for multiple languages. Assume text will be longer once translated.

5. The design system

Own our collective component library and design standards.
Keep it in step with what engineering actually ships. A system nobody uses is worse than none.
Document patterns so other designers and engineers can apply them without asking you.

6. Prototype before spec

Build clickable prototypes to answer open questions early.
Use AI tools to generate variants, draft copy and explore directions quickly.
Put prototypes in front of real users and change your mind when they tell you to.

7. Handoff and working with engineering

Produce handoff-ready files, specs and states that engineers can build from without guesswork.
Cover the unglamorous cases: empty states, errors, loading, long names, missing data, poor network.
Review builds before release and hold the bar on implementation quality.

8. Measure whether the design worked

Define what success looks like before the design ships: task completion, time on task, error and drop-off rates.
Work with product and data teams to read adoption and funnel data after release.
Go back and fix what the data says is not working.

9. Team Work

Work closely with product managers, engineers and market operations teams through the full product lifecycle.
Bring evidence to design debates. Be willing to be overruled, and be willing to argue your case.
Keep stakeholders informed at every stage.

10. Travel

Travel as required to Sun King markets, including Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania and Myanmar, with regular field visits to agents and customers.

1. Background and approach

A portfolio of shipped product work (mandatory). We want two or three cases in depth: the problem, what you tried, what you did, and what happened after launch.
5–7 years designing digital products, with meaningful time on mobile.
Experience designing for users who are not like you, ideally in emerging markets, field operations, fintech or last-mile distribution.
Able to structure and evaluate ambiguous problems.
Clear communication in writing. You will explain design choice to people who are not designers.
A proactive attitude and willingness to get hands-on. We are small and you will do your own research, design and testing.
A formal design degree is welcome but not required. The portfolio matters more.

2. Language

Professional working proficiency in English (mandatory). You will work with colleagues and stakeholders across our markets in Africa and Asia.
A local market language such as Swahili, French, Hausa, Yoruba or Luganda is a strong plus for field research.

3. Essential skills

Expert in Figma, including components, variables, auto layout and prototyping.
Hands-on experience building or maintaining a design system.
Practical research skills: usability testing, contextual inquiry and field interviews, run by you rather than outsourced.
Android design conventions and Material Design, applied with judgement rather than by default.
Accessibility and legibility fundamentals: contrast, touch targets, text scaling, and patterns that work for low-literacy users.
Enough data literacy to read a funnel, an adoption chart or an A/B test result and act on it.
Comfortable using AI tools in your design workflow, for concepts, copy, research synthesis and prototypes.

4. Good to have

Experience designing offline-first or intermittently integrated applications.
Front-end familiarity (HTML, CSS, or React) — enough to talk to engineers about what is expensive to build.
Motion design or illustration.
Service design experience covering journeys that cross online and offline steps.
Exposure to pay-as-you-go, asset finance, microfinance or emerging-market lending.
Hands-on experience with SQL.

About the Company

Sun King

Off-grid solar home systems provider

Sun King designs, manufactures, distributes, and finances solar home energy products for off-grid communities in Africa and Asia. Its range includes solar lanterns and solar home systems with inverters and storage that can power lights, radios, phones, and household appliances, all financed through a pay-as-you-go model with small mobile money installments after a low upfront payment. The company differentiates itself with an end-to-end approach—handling product design, manufacturing, distribution, and financing—supported by a large field-agent network and strategic acquisitions like PayGo Energy to expand into clean cooking. Its goal is to increase energy access by helping households leapfrog kerosene and unreliable grids, aiming to reach millions of homes and businesses, including over 2 million in Ethiopia by 2030.

Company size: 1,001-5,000
Company stage: Debt Financing
Total funding: $864.9M
Headquarters: Chicago, IL
Founded: 2008

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