Head of Data Operations

Head Of Data Operations

Sun King is seeking a servant-leader to serve as the Head of Data Operations. This role acts as the data equivalent of Product Ops in a software organization, focusing on enablement and systems design. You will oversee the Data Academy, which serves as our internal residency for elite data talent and functions as the primary Data Desk for the organization. As the Head of Data Operations, you will lead a team of regional Data Operations Leads across Kenya and India. The ideal candidate is a practitioner who finds professional reward in building systems that empower others to do great work. You likely have experience building internal training programs at a global consultancy, managing technical enablement at a high-growth company, or leading pedagogical delivery at a technical institution like Moringa School or Andela.

What You Will Be Expected To Do

Enablement and Systems Design

• Manage the Talent Pipeline: Oversee the rotation curriculum and technical onboarding systems that transform entry-level graduates into high-impact Analysts and Analytics Engineers. You will empower your Data Operations Leads to execute this curriculum daily.
• Strategic Recruitment: Lead the selection and onboarding of regional Data Operations Leads and oversee the data-driven recruitment engine used to filter high-volume campus applications and secure top-tier talent.
• Define Technical Standards: Establish the Sun King Data Standard, ensuring every graduate masters SQL, LookML, and the business logic required for specialized roles.

Global Operational Flow and Data Desk Management

• Service Accountability: Set the global strategy for the Data Desk. While your regional Leads manage daily ticket assignments, you are responsible for overall SLA performance, quality of output, and the health of escalation pathways.
• Operationalize Quality: Partner with the Data Product team to define high-level SOPs. You will guide your Data Operations Leads in testing these procedures to ensure they are realistic for the junior workforce.
• Systemic Automation: Lead the transition of manual tasks into automated self-service tools by working with the Engineering Hub. Your goal is to provide the Data Product team with high-quality assets that reduce the support burden on the desk.

Leadership and Technical Oversight

• Management of Regional Leads: Provide mentorship and professional development to the Data Operations Leads. You will ensure they are utilizing their squads effectively and maintaining technical rigor across all cohorts.
• Hands-On Mentorship: While your focus is on the system, you will remain close to the technical work. You will not build executive dashboards daily, but you will oversee their development and get involved in troubleshooting and fixing code when pipelines or logic fail.

Empowerment over Centralization: Success is measured by the speed at which you graduate talent and how effectively you enable the Data Product team to deploy new tools through the Data Ops infrastructure.

You Might Be A Strong Candidate If You Have/Are

• Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in a technical or pedagogical field such as Computer Science, Data Science, or Education.
• Professional Experience: 6–8 years of experience in data, with at least 3 years as a senior practitioner and significant experience in a technical training, enablement, or "skip-level" management role.
• Technical Proficiency: Expert-level command of SQL and LookML, with a deep understanding of AWS-based environments including Redshift, S3, and Glue.
• Leadership Style: A track record of prioritizing the growth and competence of a team over personal technical accolades.

Operational Grit: Experience managing service queues and designing scalable training or recruitment workflows.

What Sun King Offers

• Professional growth in a dynamic, rapidly expanding, high-social-impact industry
• An open-minded, collaborative culture made up of enthusiastic colleagues who are driven by the challenge of innovation towards profound impact on people and the planet.
• A truly multicultural experience: you will have the chance to work with and learn from people from different geographies, nationalities, and backgrounds.
• Structured, tailored learning and development programs that help you become a better leader, manager, and professional through the Sun King Center for Leadership.

About Sun King

Sun King is the world's leading off-grid solar energy company, combining cutting-edge product design, fintech, and field operations to deliver energy access for the 1.8 billion people who live without an affordable and reliable electric-grid connection. Sun King has built a new kind of energy utility: distributed, green, customer-centric, and affordable. We bring clean, reliable, decentralized energy directly into people's lives — from solar kits that provide first-time energy access to multi-kilowatt systems that serve both off-grid users and grid-connected customers powering larger homes, schools, hospitals, farms, offices, and light manufacturing. Already, 25 million homes and businesses rely on Sun King for electricity supply and the appliances and services it enables: lighting, televisions, fans, refrigeration, and smartphones. Sun King combines energy generation, energy-efficient appliances, installation, and financing into one seamless offering. Think of it as a distributed utility, designed for wherever energy is needed and designed to scale with its users as incomes and energy needs grow. Sun King makes solar products affordable to low-income households and businesses via 'pay-as-you-go' (PAYG) purchase financing. Sun King installs solar after customers pay a small deposit. Customers then make small, manageable payments of as little as US $0.14 a day via mobile money or cash. Instead of paying for expensive, polluting, and health-damaging kerosene for lighting or diesel for power, customers unlock savings through accessing solar power and after one to two years of payments, customers own their solar equipment outright. Sun King collects payments digitally through mobile money systems and its 35,000 field agents — over 1 million payments each day. To date, Sun King has extended more than $1.4 billion in PAYG loans to customers. Sun King began by powering homes and businesses with solar systems delivered through PAYG financing. Now, we're using the same model to make smartphones and clean cooking equipment affordable: helping households connect to the digital economy and transition from wood-based fuels to modern, sustainable alternatives. Sun King employs 3,500 full-time staff in 14 countries, with specialties spanning product design, data science, logistics, customer service, sales, software, operations, and more — all with a passion to serve off-grid families. Sun King is committed to gender diversity in the workplace. Women represent 42% of Sun King's workforce.

Our Hiring Process

Stage 1: Business Review

Stage 2: Round 1

Stage 3: R3