Sun King

Trade Marketing Manager

Posted 6 Hours Ago

Be an Early Applicant

Hiring Remotely in Kenya

Remote

Mid level

Greentech • Energy • Solar • Renewable Energy

The Role

Develop and enforce trade marketing, merchandising, branding, and shop presentation standards across Kenya. The role conducts compliance audits, analyzes sell-out and market data, coordinates agencies and vendors, manages visibility assets and shop refurbishments, oversees branding budgets, and prepares performance reports. It partners with Product, Brand, Sales, Commercial, Activation, and field teams to improve execution and measure activation results.

Summary Generated by Built In

Location: Kenya
About the Role:
The Trade Marketing Manager is accountable for developing and maintaining trade marketing standards, guidelines and compliance to ensure consistent Sun King brand and product presentation across Kenya, including Sun King shops and the wider trade network.
The role establishes execution standards for visibility assets, POS materials, product displays, pricing communication and wall branding, working closely with the creative team to develop clear visual guidelines. It also oversees shop optimization, refurbishments, cross-category visibility initiatives, market insights and compliance audits.
Product/Brand Managers for Solar, Inverters, EasyCook LPG, Phones and HomePlus Max oversee the implementation and maintenance of these standards within their respective categories, including POSM placement, activations and field team coordination.
The Trade Marketing Manager tracks implementation through regular reviews, compliance audits and monthly reports, identifies execution gaps and communicates findings to the relevant Product/Brand Managers, who coordinate the necessary improvements.

What you would be expected to do:

Trade visibility standards, guidelines and creative

Develop and maintain brand and merchandising standards for Sun King's product presentation across Sun King shops and the wider trade network, covering point-of-sale materials, danglers, standees, product displays, price communication and wall branding.
Work closely with the creative team to develop visual reference standards for each visibility asset, including examples of effective dangler and standee placement in AHQs, providing Product/Brand Managers with clear implementation guidelines.
Translate vertical campaign briefs into practical trade and shop-level standards to guide consistent execution.

Compliance auditing

Conduct audits of shops and trade points against established standards, assess compliance by shop and vertical, and communicate identified gaps to the relevant Product/Brand Managers.
Maintain the trade marketing tracker, documenting standards compliance across verticals as part of the marketing operating cadence.

Performance Assessment and Improvement

Review vertical execution plans to ensure alignment with established standards before rollout, and present audit findings and sell-out insights to Product/Brand Managers and Commercial to inform improvement initiatives.
Review sell-out and product performance data by shop and vertical, identify areas of underperformance and recommend appropriate improvements to Commercial and the relevant Product/Brand Managers.
Evaluate sell-out growth in activated shops against comparable shops to measure the impact and return on investment of each vertical's activation activities.

Brand visibility across the wider trade network

Plan and coordinate Sun King brand visibility at partner retail outlets, markets and trading centres across Kenya.
Oversee wall branding across the wider trade network, including briefing vendors, approving designs, monitoring installations and ensuring branded walls remain in good condition.
Monitor other brands' market presence, pricing and promotional activities across the trade network, reporting relevant findings to the Marketing team and Commercial each month.
Conduct trade immersions and field visits, translating observations into practical improvement plans with clearly assigned owners and timelines.
Coordinate and manage agencies and vendors overseeing trade branding and activation activities.

Energy Officer visibility assets

Coordinate the procurement of gazebos and parasols for Energy Officers in line with approved demand forecasts and budget allocations.
Oversee the distribution of gazebos and parasols to Energy Officers and maintain accurate allocation and tracking records.
Monitor the condition of visibility assets and coordinate maintenance and replacements to ensure every Energy Officer in the field has access to a serviceable unit.

Shop optimization

Oversee shop branding and the shop refurbishment programme, including vendor quotation reviews and delivery monitoring.
Monitor and report shop branding expenditure against the approved budget.
Establish and maintain brand standards for the shop environment, ensuring consistent presentation across locations.

Insights, reporting and governance

Prepare a monthly trade marketing performance report for the Head of Marketing, Kenya, covering key performance indicators, including standards compliance by vertical.
Maintain the trade marketing tracker in line with the marketing operating cadence and procurement framework.
Coordinate execution activities with Sales, Activation Managers and the Energy Officer network, while working with Commercial to generate and apply sell-out insights.

You would be a strong candidate if you have:

A degree in Marketing, Business Administration or a related field.
At least four years of experience in trade marketing, retail marketing or sales-linked marketing, ideally within consumer durables, FMCG, telecommunications or distribution.
Demonstrated experience using sales data to inform shop-level and trade marketing strategies.
Experience coordinating agencies, vendors and marketing budgets.
The ability to develop, interpret and present performance dashboards using data-informed tools, translating findings into practical recommendations.
The expertise to link marketing activities to sales volumes, margins and customer behaviour.
Willingness to spend time in shops and trade locations, as well as travel across Kenya.
The ability to establish trade visibility standards and secure their adoption across Solar, Inverters, EasyCook and Phones Product/Brand Managers, without direct authority over their execution.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain standards, plans and expectations clearly to different stakeholders.

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 Centre for Leadership.

We place great importance on sustaining a diverse, inclusive work environment.

We believe that innovation and understanding comes from diversity on every spectrum. We work to make sure every Sun King team member knows that they belong, knowing that sustaining an inclusive workplace requires conscious effort and is a continuous journey, not an end-state.
Sun King recruits, employs, trains, compensates and promotes people based on their experience, skills, effort, and results. We explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, religion, caste, national origin, colour, gender, marital status, family structure, sexual orientation, HIV/AIDS status, or disability.

About
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.

Skills Required

Degree in Marketing, Business Administration, or a related field
At least four years of experience in trade marketing, retail marketing, or sales-linked marketing
Experience in consumer durables, FMCG, telecommunications, or distribution
Experience using sales data to inform shop-level and trade marketing strategies
Experience coordinating agencies, vendors, and marketing budgets
Ability to develop, interpret, and present performance dashboards using data-informed tools
Ability to link marketing activities to sales volumes, margins, and customer behavior
Willingness to work in shops and trade locations and travel across Kenya
Ability to establish trade visibility standards and secure adoption across Product and Brand Managers without direct authority
Strong communication skills for explaining standards, plans, and expectations to stakeholders

Sun King Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Sun King and has not been reviewed or approved by Sun King.

Pay Growth & Progression — Corporate and regional office settings often feature yearly salary increases paired with reasonable base pay in customer service and administrative roles. Performance-linked structures are described as part of the compensation approach in these environments.
Strong & Reliable Incentives — Office-based and some sales roles are described as offering good incentives that reward performance. Operational support such as device-financing tools helps sales staff pitch products and can enhance earnings potential.
Healthcare Strength — Certain field-sales roles explicitly include family health insurance alongside allowances in markets like Nigeria. These provisions add tangible value to total compensation for eligible employees.