Head of Market Research

Role Overview

The Head of Market Research is the person accountable for what this organization knows about its customers. Day to day, that means sitting with product, commercial, expansion, and carbon teams to work out which open questions matter most, then designing and running the studies — surveys, focus groups, home visits, usability tests — that answer them, and translating the findings into briefings senior leaders can act on. The role exists because decisions about what to build, where to sell, and how to price should rest on evidence gathered from real households rather than assumption, and someone has to build the standards, methods, and team that make that evidence reliable across every market the company operates in.

Key Responsibilities

• Set and steward the organization's research agenda: partner with internal stakeholders to surface knowledge gaps, rank studies against upcoming product and commercial decisions, and recommend the fastest, most economical method for each question.
• Run the full research cycle — scoping, study design, sampling, data collection, analysis, and reporting — at a consistent quality bar across all operating markets.
• Direct field operations end to end, covering focus groups, household surveys, face-to-face interviews, home visits, usability sessions, and remote or telephone surveys.
• Build and police field capacity, whether that is an in-house enumerator team or an external agency, through structured training, close supervision, and firm adherence to research ethics.
• Write and present reports and briefings that go beyond data delivery — surfacing the insight and the recommendation that follows from it.
• Combine primary research with connected-product signals such as cooking telemetry, app engagement, and PAYGO repayment behaviour to form a fuller picture of the customer.
• Act as the customer's advocate inside the business, relaying user feedback into the decisions made by new product development, commercial, expansion, and carbon teams.
• Coordinate with country teams to adapt study design to local context, language, and available channels.
• Lead the research function itself — developing team capability, lifting the quality and impact of output, and giving strategic direction on how the team should be structured and grown over the first six months.

Requirements & Qualifications

• At least 8 years in market research, consumer insights, or applied social research, of which 3 or more were spent leading a research team.
• Fluent command of both quantitative and qualitative technique: survey design and sampling, focus group moderation, in-home and ethnographic work, and statistical analysis.
• Demonstrated record of running multi-country field operations in African or comparable emerging markets, including direct management of third-party research agencies.
• Strong analytical toolkit — advanced Excel plus proficiency in at least one of SPSS, Stata, R, or Python — alongside practical experience with digital collection platforms such as SurveyCTO, KoboToolbox, or ODK.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication, with a proven ability to compress complex data into clear, decision-ready recommendations for senior leadership.
• Bachelor's degree in statistics, economics, social sciences, marketing, or a related discipline.
• Readiness to travel frequently across the company's markets.

What We Offer / Why Join

This is a role for someone who wants their research to land in the room where decisions get made. The function is being shaped now — you will have a genuine hand in how it is structured, staffed, and prioritised — and you will work on questions that touch household energy access and last-mile distribution rather than abstract brand tracking.

Desirable

• Prior research experience in clean cookstoves, household energy, PAYGO or asset finance, or last-mile distribution.
• Experience pairing primary research with behavioural or product data such as IoT telemetry, app analytics, or transaction records.