About this role
About Mulilo
Founded in 2008, Mulilo has grown into one of Southern Africa’s leading Independent Power Producers (IPPs), with an operational and construction portfolio spanning wind and solar PV projects across South Africa. Mulilo has been an active participant in the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPP) across multiple bid windows and has successfully concluded Power Purchase Agreements with a range of corporate energy users under wheeling and bilateral structures. With a development pipeline exceeding 25GW, Mulilo is positioned as a key enabler of South Africa’s just energy transition.
Mulilo is committed to sustainable, responsible business practice and is guided by strong ethical, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles. The company places significant value on its people, offering a dynamic and high-performance working environment with meaningful opportunities for growth.
About this role
Mulilo is looking for a Head of Corporate Standards to build and lead the enterprise function that keeps the business performing consistently as it scales. Reporting to the COO, this role sets the operating standards across HSSE, quality, systems and technology, policy and procedure, organisational capability, and cross-departmental projects — assuring they are applied consistently, connecting the dots between departments, and driving continuous improvement across the organisation as a whole. The ideal candidate combines engineering or operational rigour with the credibility and stakeholder management skill to influence at executive level and is energised by building governance frameworks that make a business measurably better over time.
Reporting Line
Chief Operating Officer (COO)
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
Duties and responsibilities
Standards Governance & Assurance
• Set clear, practical, documented standards for each domain under Corporate Standards, aligned to recognised frameworks (APQC, TOGAF, ISO, CMMI, PMI).
• Run regular structured reviews across all departments to assure adherence — a performance conversation, not an audit.
• Assess the downstream impact of change in one domain on others before it happens and provide the COO with one consolidated view of organisational health and standards performance.
HSSE & Quality Management
• Govern health, safety and security standards across all operations, translating ESG policy into the plans and procedures that inform execution.
• Define and assure the standards by which the business delivers its work, ensuring quality is measured, consistent and auditable rather than a local interpretation.
• Partner with Policy & Procedure Adoption to build best practice and quality compliance into procedures as they are written.
Systems & Technology Governance
• Govern how technology is adopted and managed across the business, including determining which system is authoritative where information lives in more than one place.
• Set enterprise-wide structure for core systems, ensuring one governed platform per function rather than fragmented departmental versions.
• Act as interpreter between the business and development teams, translating needs into clear requirements so systems work as one solution.
Policy, Procedure Adoption & Organisational Capability
• Compile and roll out procedures, keeping content current, training the business on changes, and verifying adoption rather than just publication.
• Lead the process dimension of organisational capability — capability mapping, maturity assessment, performance frameworks and governance structures — partnering closely with People & Organisation on the people dimension.
• Ensure cross-departmental touchpoints in policies and procedures don't create conflicting rules.
Strategic Project Management & Continuous Improvement
• Set the methodology for planning, gating and reporting on strategic projects that span more than one department and orchestrate delivery where no single department can see the whole picture.
• Own the enterprise-wide continuous improvement framework, capturing lessons learned — whether something goes wrong or right — and turning them into improvements to the standard, anchored in Plan-Do-Check-Act.
• Close every strategic project with a structured lessons-learned review that feeds directly into the continuous improvement framework.
Required qualifications and experience
Minimum requirements:
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Business, Industrial Engineering or a related field.
• 12+ years of senior operational, quality or governance leadership experience, including demonstrated exposure to multiple standards frameworks (e.g. ISO 9001, ISO 45001, ISO 27001, TOGAF, APQC, PMI/PMBOK).
• Proven experience establishing or governing enterprise-wide standards, quality, or PMO functions across multiple departments or business units.
• Experience operating at senior management or executive level, with a track record of reporting to and influencing C-suite stakeholders.
• Strong working knowledge of continuous improvement methodologies (PDCA, Lean, Six Sigma, CMMI).
Advantageous:
• MBA or postgraduate qualification in business, engineering or technology management.
• Professional certifications such as PMP, PRINCE2, TOGAF, or ISO Lead Auditor status.
• Experience in the renewable energy, independent power producer (IPP) or broader infrastructure sector.
• Registered Professional Engineer or equivalent professional body membership.
Key competencies
• Leadership and influence — able to manage and motivate diverse teams and contractors with authority and credibility.
• Communication excellence — outstanding written and verbal communication; able to adapt style and tone across audiences.
• Organisational agility — adept at managing multiple workstreams simultaneously; calm and solutions-focused under pressure.
• Integrity and discretion — handles sensitive corporate information and reputational matters with sound judgement.
• Systems thinking — sees across multiple domains simultaneously, connects cross-departmental dots and anticipates downstream consequences before they occur.
Desirable attributes
The ideal candidate has a genuine passion for building the systems and standards that make a growing business perform better and is energised by working across every part of the organisation rather than owning a single silo. They bring the quiet authority to hold departments accountable to a shared standard without becoming an auditor and see governance as a lever for enterprise performance rather than a compliance exercise.
Mulilo is an employer of choice and offers an extremely competitive total remuneration package for this position.
Additional information
The position is based at Mulilo's Cape Town offices. Occasional travel to project and construction sites may be required in line with business needs.