About Us:
UpEnergy delivers high-impact, emission-reducing projects that accelerate decarbonization and create long-term benefits in local communities. We make life-improving clean technologies available to local communities and environments across Africa. Whether protecting the local environment, delivering health benefits, or reducing poverty through financial savings and employment, our projects sustainably benefit and enable people to live better lives within climate-resilient communities.
UpEnergy has delivered over 95 emission reduction projects, impacted over 4 million lives, and reduced over 4 million tons of CO2 Emissions across seven countries. UpEnergy prides itself on deep local knowledge and established teams on the ground to ensure the highest impact and results. The UpEnergy team continues to grow, across multiple countries and continents and seeks diligent, entrepreneurial, fun, and motivated talent excited to join us in delivering even more impact. Learn more here: www.upenergygroup.com
About the role:
The User Insight Lead is UpEnergy Ghana's product expert on the ground and the primary link between customers in the field and the product team. This person lives with our products (the electric pressure cooker, induction stove, water purification, and the upcoming Smart Cook), knows them well enough to answer any question and resolve any error, owns our pilots from design through to insight, runs structured experimentation and cooking demonstrations, trains field teams, and brings rigorous, unfiltered insight back from customers to shape what we build next.
This is a field role first, a research role second, and a desk role last. We are looking for someone who is energised by being in markets, hubs, and customers' kitchens, and who can turn what they see there into evidence the product team can act on.
Key Responsibilities
- Product Mastery and Troubleshooting
- Become the definitive expert on every UpEnergy cooking and water product: functions, settings, common errors, and how to prevent and resolve them.
- Deliberately push products to their failure modes and recover them, so you can anticipate and fix issues before customers hit them.
- Keep product and recipe content accurate across the Smart Cook app and other channels.
- On-the-Ground Support
- Be the first point of contact for staff, call centre, field agents, and end users on any product question, in real time.
- Handle complex inquiries across channels, including customer questions on social media.
- Experimentation and Training (the End-User Insight Lab)
- Run a structured experimentation lab: test cooking methods and recipes that customers actually want, document each method, and assess what works.
- Build implementation plans to roll learnings out to the field and to end users.
- Cascade training to distribution agents and hub teams using live demonstration, and support agent onboarding alongside the distribution lead.
- Field Activations and Demand Generation
- Design, run, and assess pitch campaigns, cooking demonstrations, and activation days with the distribution team.
- Move these from ad hoc events to structured, measured activities: test which messaging, timing, and dishes drive customer interest, capture the data, and report on what worked and the return it generated.
- End-User Insight and Research
- Design and run structured qualitative research with samples of end users, on a defined cadence, through calls and field visits.
- Set up a clean feedback funnel from after-sales agents, promoters, call centre, and distribution so insight reaches the product team unmassaged.
- Analyse the feedback, share insight with the product and carbon teams, and translate findings into product improvements and field pilots.
- Pilot Ownership (End to End)
- Own UpEnergy Ghana's pilots from start to finish, across household and institutional users (schools and similar), and for new products as they are developed.
- Design or adapt the pilot protocol, plan and run participant onboarding and field execution, oversee data collection and data quality, analyse results, and report findings that feed product decisions, behaviour change strategy, and carbon outcomes.
- Track timelines, deliverables, and risks, escalate early, and coordinate closely with the product, carbon, behavioural science, and operations teams throughout.
Focus in the First Six Months
To keep expectations concrete, success in the first six months looks like:
- Demonstrated mastery of the current product range, including error troubleshooting, verified by staff and agents relying on you as their go-to resource.
- The experimentation lab stood up, with a documented method library and a recurring monthly recipe and content output.
- At least [target] structured cooking demonstrations or activations run, each with data captured and a short analysis of what drove interest.
- The end-user feedback funnel established, with the first monthly insight report delivered from a defined customer sample.
- Full ownership taken of the active pilots, with protocols, participant onboarding, and data collection running to plan, and first results reported.
Who We Are Looking For
Essential:
- A field person first: High energy, comfortable and effective spending most of your time in markets, hubs, and customers' kitchens across regions. Willing to travel frequently within Ghana.
- Strong research and data skills: Able to independently design and run simple studies and surveys, sample customers, conduct qualitative interviews, and analyse both qualitative and basic quantitative data. Comfortable with tools such as SurveyCTO.
- Hands-on pilot experience: Has run pilots or field experiments end to end, from protocol design, through participant onboarding and field execution, to data quality, analysis, and reporting.
- End-to-end ownership: Takes a task from question, to design, to execution, to analysis, to recommendation without needing it broken down for you.
- Genuine cooking fluency and comfort: Skilled and confident cooking a range of dishes, and comfortable doing live and on-camera cooking demonstrations.
- Strong presentation, facilitation, and training skills: Can lead meetings and train agents and teams.
- Comfort with technology and consumer products: Quick to learn a device inside out.
- Language skills: Excellent communication in English and relevant local language(s) for Ghanaian markets.
Desirable:
- Bachelor’s degree or higher in User Experience, Market Research, Behavioural Science, Industrial Design, Engineering, or a related field. Candidates with equivalent technical/research qualifications and strong hands-on experience in field user insights, product testing, or customer feedback analysis will also be considered.
- At least 4 years of experience in user insight, field research, product experience, customer feedback management, or closely related roles for consumer hardware products or clean cooking/energy solutions at scale.
- Experience in consumer products, clean cooking or clean energy, FMCG field marketing, or user research.
- Formal grounding in behavioural science or experimental design.
- Experience with institutional or B2B users (schools, restaurants, or similar).
Why Join Us?
Your Impact, Amplified
Joining UpEnergy means becoming part of a mission-driven team dedicated to making a tangible difference in the world. Our focus is on ensuring that the world's poorest are not left behind in global decarbonization efforts, and that sustainable, life-improving technologies reach those who need them most. As a fast-growing organization, we provide the unique opportunity to work on innovative projects that directly impact millions of lives across Africa. Whether you're on the ground implementing projects or supporting our global expansion, you'll be part of a dynamic team where your work contributes to reducing CO2 emissions and fighting energy poverty. This is more than just a job—it's a chance to create lasting change and be at the forefront of a global movement towards equitable decarbonization.
