Director of Support Services Job in Kenya

Director of Support Services 

Job Ref BA/DSS/TB/7

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Our client is a startup for Profit Company, revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model. The company has launched a large-scale franchise-like network of ultra low-cost for-profit private primary schools across Africa.

Their schools profitably deliver high-quality education for less than $4 per child per month, enabling local school managers to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level.

They have already launched the first 12 schools in their network in the slums of Nairobi with tremendous success, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million families in Africa.

About this position

We are seeking a full-time Director of Support Services, who, underneath our Head of School Operations, will be responsible for the support of all the schools within our network.

This responsibility includes improving upon the design of our existing processes and tools used by our support personnel to audit and ensure the quality of our schools, as well as the actual day-to-day oversight and management of a rapidly growing team of support personnel.

The company has developed extensive systems and tools for its operations that allow someone they hire from the local community to easily and successfully open and manage the operations of a school – they call this our “School in Box” model.

Most of the systems and tools developed are low-tech and paper-based because of the environment in which they work. It starts with our very detailed Operators Manual and spans across all instructional, financial, operations and human resource management issues and systems.

They have a team of support personnel, called School Operations Officers who work with a group of our schools to ensure that the management and monitoring systems and tools that are part of our “School in a Box” are effectively implemented at individual schools both by school managers and teachers. This includes every aspect of the school, from finance, recruiting, instructional delivery, facilities management and more.

As their network scales to thousands of schools, hundreds of School Operations Officers and Operation Officer Managers will need to be hired and supervised. It is the job of the Director of Support Services to ensure that they can continue to cost-effectively support and monitor all of their schools through their team of School Operations Officers and Managers.

About You
  • You have 5-10 years experience managing a large-scale field support or supervisor team for a business with many geographically separated units, shops, stores, etc
  • You have experience developing detailed systems and processes that can be used by support personnel to audit businesses in the field.
  • You have demonstrated capacity to think way outside the box in identifying critical issues and developing non-traditional approaches to solve them.
  • You bring with you experience in scaling and managing a team of support personnel
  • Experience in working in very poor communities (slums) is a real plus
  • You are a very process or system-oriented person.
  • You are very hands-on and not afraid of getting your hands dirty
  • You have experience managing projects with many moving pieces, and building and managing teams of people
  • You function well in a fast-paced informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high.
  • Experience in education or schools NOT required.
  • Franchise or chain management experience in Kenya is a real plus
Our team has a passionate belief that basic primary education is critical to the development of every child, family, community and nation.

We believe that it is possible to address this critical need for poor families through new and innovative approaches leveraging the private sector, and that by providing low-cost but high-quality primary education, we will give millions of children the opportunity to accomplish their dreams. We are looking for someone who wants to join us in this rewarding task.

To apply for this position, please e mail info@byappointmentafrica.com quoting the Job Reference.

Please attach your C.V. in word format with a detailed application letter in line with the job description and attach a recent photograph of yourself.

Please note you will only be contacted if shortlisted for the position.

You can also visit www.kenyanvacancies.com for more jobs