Location : Lagos, Nigeria/Nairobi, Kenya.
About the role:
The Product Manager, Devices sits at the intersection of customer insight, competitive intelligence, and product validation. You will own the voice of the market across all phases of the phone product lifecycle — from defining what customers need, to benchmarking, to running structured field trials, to planning next-generation transitions across all Sun King market. You will work closely with the Hardware Engineering & Procurement team, Software Engineering & Security team, and Commercial team to ensure new devices are grounded in real-world market requirements and are rigorously validated before launch.
Market & Customer Requirements
- Conduct in-depth surveys and interviews with customers and agents across target markets and customer segment to identify the most desirable features, specifications, and improvements for new phone models.
- Synthesize findings into structured, prioritized market requirement briefs segmented by geography and customer type, to serve as inputs into device development
Competitive Benchmarking
- Identify and maintain a list of the most relevant competitive phone models for use as benchmarks in lab testing, based on market positioning and customer alternatives
- Define hardware and OS benchmarking criteria — both quantitative (e.g. performance, battery life, RF signal quality) and qualitative (e.g. user experience, build quality, ergonomics)
Field Trial Planning & Execution
- Define field trial requirements for market validation, including survey instruments, success metrics, and clear pass/fail criteria
- Write an integrated field trial plan that consolidates requirements from the Business Unit, Hardware & Software Engineering teams into a single, cohesive document
- Organize and manage field trials end-to-end: site selection, participant training, sales enablement, survey deployment, and results reporting
- Report issues surfaced during trials — from customers, field teams, and the Contact Center — to the Hardware & Software Engineering teams promptly and in full detail upon discovery, to support their technical tracking and resolution processes
- Ensure market-side inputs (survey results, customer feedback, field observations) are fed back to the Hardware & Software Engineering teams in a format that supports their end-to-end technical review and model approval process.
Cross-Functional Alignment
- Maintain alignment with the Engineering teams on project status, schedule milestones, and known technical risks for each device under evaluation from to time.
- Escalate delays or blockers that affect market validation timelines to relevant stakeholders promptly
- Serve as the primary point of contact for all device programmes, ensuring Business Unit requirements are clearly communicated and tracked through to launch.
Post-launch Feedback Management & Product Improvement
- Serve as the central owner of post-launch product feedback for all currently used phone models, covering both hardware and software performance in the field
- Systematically collect and consolidate feedback and improvement suggestions from all relevant internal touchpoints — including the Contact Center, After-Sales team, and field sales teams — into a structured, regularly updated feedback log
- Dissect consolidated feedback to identify recurring issues, patterns, and prioritised improvement opportunities across hardware, Android OS, and MDM software layers.
- Share structured findings with the Engineering teams in a clear, actionable format; ensure feedback is tied to specific models, software versions, and affected customer segments where possible.
- Track the status of all flagged issues and requested improvements through to resolution; maintain visibility on progress and hold relevant engineering teams accountable to agreed timelines
- Support the planning and deployment of hardware and software upgrades arising from field feedback
End-of-life planning
- Lead end-of-life decision-making and planning for existing phone models, coordinating with Commercial, Engineering & Operations stakeholders on timing, transitions, and downstream commercial impacts.
- 5+ years in product management, or market strategy in mobile devices or consumer electronics.
- Bachelors or Higher National Diploma from a reputable institution in Engineering or similar background
- Familiarity with ODM and device development processes.
- Experience designing and running structured field trials or market validation programmes.
- Track record of cross-functional collaboration across engineering, software and commercial teams
- Hands-on experience in device QA, device acceptance testing, or technical product validation — able to write precise, testable hardware and software acceptance,
Skills:
- Good analytical skills — able to synthesize qualitative and quantitative customer inputs into clear, prioritized recommendations
- Comfortable reading and interpreting technical test reports, lab results, and software release notes; able to ask informed questions of engineering teams and critically assess their responses
- Excellent written and verbal communication; able to produce crisp requirement documents, integrated plans, and executive-ready reports
- Structured project management; able to coordinate multiple concurrent workstreams across geographies and time zones
- Good Excel skills on data analytics and familiarity with relevant excel formulas.
- 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 Center for Leadership.