About the role
- Food for Education (F4E) feeds over 600,000 children across Kenya every school day, and we're scaling to one million meals a day. That growth only happens because people show up in the field every day with ownership. As an Area Operations Officer, you are the operational backbone of 4 production sites (kitchens) in your area. Each site comprises 2-4 Kitchen Officers (cooks). You're not a supervisor passing down instructions, you're the person who makes sure every kitchen under your watch runs safely, efficiently, and to standard. You know your sites better than anyone: their performance, their challenges, their opportunities. You bring solutions, not just reports.
- This is a field-based role. You'll visit 1-2 sites each day - you’re on the ground, in the kitchens, with the teams.
Your Mandate
Site Operations & Standards
- Conduct structured audits of your sites, ensuring compliance with F4E's SOPs, food safety policies, and operational standards.
- Train kitchen staff on SOPs and communicate policy updates — you're the bridge between the service centre and the sites.
- Ensure every site has what it needs to operate: stock, PPE, equipment, and supplies are
- Validate stock takes twice a month at every site you oversee.
Financial Oversight
- Own your understanding of cost-per-meal (CPM) variance across all your sites. You are the person who knows why costs moved, and you surface both concerns and opportunities to your manager.
- Support billing processes in partnership with your Regional Coordinator and the finance team.
- Drive timely procurement: 90% of orders submitted on time, every cycle.
Data, Reporting & Analysis
- Track, synthesize, and report on performance trends at the school and kitchen level
- Respond to data requests from the service centre with accuracy and speed.
- Own yield variance analysis — understand the drivers, flag anomalies, and recommend corrective action.
Capacity & Growth
- Understand your site’s capacity: you know when sites are over- or under-utilized and proactively bring that intelligence to your manager.
Stakeholder Management
- Build and maintain relationships with other field teams and school leadership in your area. This includes occasional check-ins with the schools you serve to learn about how you and your team can improve the experience.
- Coordinate and host site visits for F4E staff and donors.
Facility Maintenance
- Own 100% reporting and escalation of facility maintenance issues; nothing is left unreported, nothing is someone else's problem.
Who You Are
- You have experience in operations, field management, or program delivery, ideally in food systems, health, or a service organization.
- You're comfortable spending your days in the field. You don't manage from a desk.
- You're analytically strong. You can read data, spot a trend, and explain the 'so what' clearly.
- You hold yourself and others to high standards. You don't wait to be asked to escalate a problem.
- You build genuine relationships with community stakeholders, local officials, and school leaders.
- You communicate clearly, upward and downward, and you know the difference between information and insight.
Core Competencies:
Technical:
- Program Implementation
- Data Literacy & Reporting
- Budgeting & Financial Management
- Quality Assurance
- Logistics & Field Coordination
- Stakeholder & Community Engagement
- Risk Assessment & Management
- Digital tools & data collection
- Capacity building & training
- Project/activity management
Soft Skills & Behavioral:
- Communication
- Problem Solving & Adaptability
- Independence & Proactivity
- Attention to Detail
- Partnership Coordination
- Planning & Coordination
- Compliance & Ethics
- Ownership & Accountability
712 open positions on Semasocial right now
· 27 open positions in Meru County, Kenya
· 26 posted in the last 7 days
Contact Information
