Senior Engineer – Project Management and Operations at CrossBoundary

Who We Are

• The chosen candidate will play an important role in a unique team with the opportunity to make a significant impact on the energy access and renewable energy landscapes in Africa, bringing first-time grid-quality power to 1 million people. Team members come from diverse backgrounds but share a number of qualities: curiosity, humility, integrity, a drive for excellence, and a bias for action.
• CrossBoundary Access is a small team, so we are looking for someone with a flexible skill set that can be adapted to add value across all of the team’s various activities. The ideal candidate is comfortable with ambiguity, able to build and maintain strong internal and external relationships, and passionate about energy access and renewable energy.

Who You Are

• A self-starter who is passionate about creating lasting change within the energy sector in Africa
• A project manager who can oversee multiple 3rd party workstreams and ensure compliance and delivery
• Interest in or willingness to learn about mini-grids and the off-grid energy sector
• Willingness to take on new types of work, even without prior experience or direct supervision
• Willingness to work and live in a sometimes-challenging environment
• A flexible, utility player

Primary Responsibilities
Engineering and Construction

• Oversee project implementation milestones and ensure timely acquisition of permits and licenses.
• Review and approve engineering designs for power generation plants and MV/LV power distribution networks to ensure compliance with CrossBoundary Access standards.
• Monitor and track project activities and milestones during procurement and construction phases, providing project management oversight.
• Provide technical oversight to ensure mini-grid sites are constructed according to CrossBoundary Access standards
• Oversee project completion, commissioning, acceptance tests and certify projects to start-up operations.
• Demonstrate the ability to use sound judgment to make decisions about assets being built and operated in challenging environments.
• Manage multiple mini-grid projects simultaneously, ensuring they are delivered on time, within scope, and within budget.
• Ensure application CrossBoundary Access HSES policies are applied to construction and operations and maintenance of mini-grids.

Operations and Maintenance

• Ensuring that internal and external system alerts from our asset monitoring platform are addressed by operators, including flags from the Odyssey and inverter/equipment monitoring systems (e.g., Uptime, Renewable Energy Fraction, Voltage Drops, SoC, battery temperature, diesel threshold, active meter count etc), and ensuring that the developer takes necessary actions.
• Ensuring efficient day-to-day operations by aiding operators in resolving significant incidents that impact daily activities, such as outages in billing payment integration.
• Ensuring day-to-day maintenance is carried out by operators, including scheduled and breakdown maintenance tasks such as solar panel cleaning, distribution pole inspections, and performing inverter and battery maintenance on-site, to ensure efficient operations.
• Providing oversight for major maintenance activities, such as inverter or battery replacements carried out by operators
• Overseeing demand stimulation by ensuring the provision of quality and reliable electricity to productive users. This includes oversight of appliance financing and retrofitting programs carried out by operators.

Qualifications
Ideal candidate will have the following skills and qualifications:

• Strong quantitative skills.
• Excellent analytical ability and discipline; ability to think clearly, structure problems logically, and then design and implement solutions that focus on the core issues
• Ability to analyze large data in Excel
• Ability to interpret, review and approve civil and electrical engineering designs including Single Line Diagrams and Power Distribution Network drawings.
• Ability to build strong relationships with partners and colleagues in challenging environments
• Excellent presentation skills: ability to communicate clearly and effectively with diverse audiences
• Comfort with ambiguity; ability to operate effectively in a changing context

Required Skills And Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in construction project management of distributed assets (telco towers, renewables, or other distributed assets). Experience in solar mini-grids is an added advantage
• 2+ years experience in oversight of operations and maintenance of distributed assets or renewable energy projects
• Strong understanding of AC/DC and MV/LV Electrical Power Systems, Power Electronics, and/or Solar Energy
• Experience in quality assurance/supervision of solar PV systems and power distribution network designs, bill of materials, technical specifications, construction, testing and commissioning
• Experience in mini-grid site assessments including end-user surveys, demand assessment, productive use, etc will be an added advantage
• Work experience or demonstrated familiarity with distributed assets or renewable energy systems and oversight of operating assets.
• Proficient in data acquisition systems and monitoring systems
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant engineering field required; other advanced degrees and project management courses will be regarded favorably
• Demonstrated ability to independently supervise multi-stakeholder projects