Senior Grants Manager
Permanent - Full TimeJob Overview
Job Location: Kenya/South Africa/Nigeria
About the Role
Sun King is seeking a Senior Grant Manager to oversee and shape the growth of its expanding portfolio of results-based financing (RBF) and grant programs across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. This is a high-impact role at the intersection of grant compliance, commercial insight, and impact measurement.
This is not a traditional grant administration role. The successful candidate will act as a key link between Sun King’s policy, finance, and delivery teams, ensuring that grant programs meet high standards while generating insights that inform business direction.
The Senior Grant Manager will design and continuously improve Sun King’s grant management system, while also overseeing the full grant portfolio across multiple markets. The role blends strategic oversight with hands-on execution, ensuring that grants are thoughtfully selected, effectively implemented, and well integrated into the business, while maintaining strong reporting, compliance, and donor engagement practices.
This role reports to the Global Vice President for Public Policy and Government Relations and works closely with country teams, finance, legal, operations, sales, and external partners.
About the Role
Sun King is seeking a Senior Grant Manager to oversee and shape the growth of its expanding portfolio of results-based financing (RBF) and grant programs across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. This is a high-impact role at the intersection of grant compliance, commercial insight, and impact measurement.
This is not a traditional grant administration role. The successful candidate will act as a key link between Sun King’s policy, finance, and delivery teams, ensuring that grant programs meet high standards while generating insights that inform business direction.
The Senior Grant Manager will design and continuously improve Sun King’s grant management system, while also overseeing the full grant portfolio across multiple markets. The role blends strategic oversight with hands-on execution, ensuring that grants are thoughtfully selected, effectively implemented, and well integrated into the business, while maintaining strong reporting, compliance, and donor engagement practices.
This role reports to the Global Vice President for Public Policy and Government Relations and works closely with country teams, finance, legal, operations, sales, and external partners.
What you will be expected to do:
Grant Strategy and Portfolio Management
- Oversee Sun King’s grant and RBF portfolio, ensuring alignment with business strategy, market priorities, and delivery capacity
- Review and shape grant opportunities, providing input on strategic fit, delivery requirements, risks, and trade-offs
- Ensure the portfolio remains aligned with commercial priorities as well as donor expectations
- Maintain a forward-looking view of the grant pipeline to inform planning and prioritization
- Identify ways grants can enable scale, reduce risk in new markets, and improve affordability
- Maintain a portfolio tracking system to provide visibility on value, risk, and workload
- Contribute to positioning Sun King as a reliable and delivery-focused partner for donors
Grant Lifecycle Management
- Manage end-to-end grant processes, from opportunity identification through to close-out
- Coordinate proposal development, ensuring submissions are high quality, realistic, and compliant
- Oversee grant setup, including alignment on scope, budgets, reporting, and operational considerations
- Act as the primary point of contact for donor compliance, reporting, and audit readiness
Grant Operations and Compliance
- Establish and improve grant management processes, templates, and tools
- Manage reporting timelines and ensure submissions are timely and accurate
- Coordinate audits, verifications, and donor reviews, addressing issues as they arise
- Ensure grant requirements are integrated into business operations
- Act as a point of contact for compliance or delivery-related risks
Cross-functional Coordination
- Work closely with country managers and program teams on grant delivery
- Coordinate inputs from finance, legal, operations, and sales teams
- Streamline data requests by improving standardization and aligning reporting with business KPIs
- Promote clear awareness of donor requirements and grant obligations across teams
External Engagement and Partnerships
- Manage relationships with donors, fund managers, and verification partners
- Coordinate external consultants facilitating proposals, compliance, or audits
- Represent Sun King in donor engagements related to grants and RBFs
You might be a strong candidate if you have:
- 7+ years of experience in grants management, results-based financing, or donor-funded programs
- Experience managing complex, multi-stakeholder grants or RBF programs
- Strong data management capability, with familiarity in M&E and impact measurement frameworks
- Experience engaging with international donors, DFIs, or fund managers (e.g., World Bank, FCDO, GIZ/EnDev, IFC, or similar)
- Practical knowledge of impact reporting and delivery requirements for credible results
- Ability to operate effectively across teams in fast-paced environments
- Familiarity with sector reporting frameworks such as GOGLA methodology and World Bank/ESMAP/GIZ indicators