Zonal Training Manager

Job Location: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

About The Role:

The Zonal Training Manager owns the training and capability agenda for Sun King Ethiopia and is accountable for turning it into measurable commercial performance across the zones in scope. You translate regional and HQ training strategy into on-the-ground execution, and you make sure every Area Business Manager, agent and technician can pitch correctly, demonstrate product functionality, screen and educate customers, and effectively sell and maintain Sun King’s Solar Home Systems and wider product portfolio.

This is a build-and-deliver role in a young, fast-scaling market. You set the quality bar and you personally deliver against it: you design and localise the curriculum, run onboarding, certification, refresher and Sales Clinic sessions yourself, coach in the field alongside the commercial team, and put in place the standards, data discipline and local trainer bench the business will scale on. Roughly 60% of the role is hands-on delivery and field coaching; the remaining 40% is running a disciplined, data-focused training function and managing a strategic commercial mandate cascaded from the Regional Training Manager and tied to the country’s core commercial metric.

What you will be expected to do:

1. Training Strategy & Ownership

• Own the annual training plan for Ethiopia’s zones, aligned to sales targets, product launches, seasonality and regional training priorities.
• Translate regional and HQ training strategy into disciplined execution across every region and market in scope.
• Set and enforce standards for onboarding, certification, refresher training, demo quality, pitch, load calculation and objection handling.
• Own the blended-learning model: classroom, field coaching, microlearning and LMS content, localised and translated for the Ethiopian market.

2. Hands-On Delivery & Field Coaching

• Personally plan, facilitate and certify onboarding and refresher cycles for agents, technicians and the commercial field team, to a consistent national standard.
• Spend the majority of your time in the field: joint field days, live demo observation, ride-alongs and on-the-spot coaching with Area Business Managers and agents.
• Run high-value certification and Sales Clinics on priority commercial topics, including product guides, screening quality and conversion.
• Keep a dated coaching log and close the loop on every gap you observe, so field coaching converts into changed behaviour and improved numbers.

3. Capability Building & the Trainer Bench

• Run train-the-trainer and calibration cycles with Area Business Managers, Regional Mentors and commercial managers so facilitation, product and coaching quality stay consistent as the market grows.
• Build a documented development plan for each bottom performer every quarter, working with the relevant commercial line manager.
• Recruit, onboard, coach and manage the performance of training staff as the country scales, holding monthly one-to-ones with every direct report.

4. Performance & KPI Delivery

• Carry accountability for reactivation rate, certified-agent conversion, face-to-face coverage and quality, and job-knowledge standards across your zones.
• Run business reviews, spot-checks and gap-closing so underperforming regions and teams are diagnosed and corrected early.
• Own execution discipline and data QA: high field-app record compliance, a healthy field-time ratio, and regular quality spot-checks on reported work.

5. Data & Reporting

• Own the training dashboards (Looker, Kazi Plan, Litmos) and use the data to find performance gaps and set priorities for training effort.
• Submit a monthly training dashboard to the Regional Training Manager, and run a quarterly Training Needs Review using sales, repayment and customer-complaint data.
• Correlate training cohorts to business outcomes: sales uplift, Collection Score improvement, lower returns and stronger customer retention.

6. Strategic Commercial Enablement

• Own one to two quarterly strategic priorities cascaded from the Regional Training Manager, tied to the country’s core commercial metric (for example, collections), and cascade the key results into field scorecards.
• Partner with Ethiopia commercial management, Zonal and Regional Business Managers and Area Business Managers to identify the skill gaps constraining revenue and design targeted interventions for underperforming teams.
• Represent training in country and zonal reviews and work closely with Sales, Risk, Operations, Programs and Marketing to align training to the commercial agenda.
• Feed structured field insights back to regional and HQ Product and Marketing teams: customer confusion points, market activity and product feedback.
• Uphold Sun King’s standards of integrity, professionalism and customer experience across the field team.

You might be a strong candidate if you have:

• 5+ years in sales training, L&D or sales management, including at least 2 years managing, coaching or developing teams or trainers, in solar, electronics, telecoms, FMCG or any agent-based distribution business.
• A proven record of building and running training programmes that moved regional or national sales metrics, not just attendance.
• Experience working across multiple regions or zones and delivering results through field teams, including teams you do not directly manage.
• Comfortable in a new or fast-scaling market: able to build from a blank page, write and localise the content, and run the sessions personally while putting the structure in place.
• A credible master facilitator with a strong technical knowledge of Solar Home Systems (and inverters where relevant), able to demo and troubleshoot the basics.
• Highly data-focused, and fluent with LMS platforms, business-intelligence dashboards (Looker) and field or CRM applications.
• Commercial acumen: able to translate a commercial target into a training plan and cascade it into team scorecards.
• Willing to travel 60-70%+ across Ethiopia.
• Fluent in English and Amharic; Afaan Oromo, Tigrinya or Somali is a strong plus.
• Bachelor’s degree required; certifications in training, facilitation or instructional design are a strong plus.

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 Center 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, color, gender, marital status, family structure, sexual orientation, HIV/AIDS status, or disability.