Sun to Sea Manager, Indonesia

About Sun to Sea

Sun to Sea is a place-based alliance and investment program that connects clean energy, ecosystem restoration, and coastal livelihoods into an integrated, investable model for Indonesia's coastal fishing communities. It builds tailored coalitions around each community's economic potential and conservation value, then deploys four reinforcing interventions: clean energy, diversified livelihoods, ecosystem preservation and restoration, and community resilience.

The program is designed to support and connect Indonesia's two presidential-priority national programs — the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries' Red & White Fishing Villages initiative (Kampung Nelayan Merah Putih) and the 100GW Solarization initiative — at the community level, where the connective tissue between them is currently missing.

Sun to Sea is led by the Global Energy Alliance, which brings energy-technology expertise and alliance-building capability, in partnership with Konservasi Indonesia, the Asian Development Bank and other organizations.

The Role

The Sun to Sea Manager is the senior technical and managerial lead responsible for delivering the Validation Phase: the design, deployment, and proof of the integrated model across 20 pilot sites in Maluku and Eastern Indonesia over an estimated two-year period. The role exists to turn the Sun to Sea concept into operating sites — proving the cost, revenue, and ecological assumptions that unlock the program's path to replication and national scale.

This is a hands-on leadership role that combines four demands rarely found in one person:

1. Cross-disciplinary technical command: Sufficient depth across energy, cold chain, fisheries and livelihoods, marine ecosystem restoration, blue carbon, and community development to integrate them into a coherent site model and to credibly direct specialists in each.
2. Government engagement: The relationships, credibility, and fluency to align pilots with Indonesian national and provincial agencies and to position the program for government ownership at scale.
3. Team leadership: The ability to lead, integrate, and get the best from a diverse team of international and national consultants.
4. Delivery discipline: The program management to take 20 sites from selection to operation on time and on budget, while generating the evidence base that the next phase depends on.

Scope of the Assignment

The Sun to Sea Manager will be accountable for:

• Leading final site selection and pre-feasibility across candidate communities, applying the program's four screening criteria (economic opportunity, conservation significance, energy need, existing partner activity), in collaboration with KI's community screening work and other partners, as identified.
• Designing the integrated intervention package for each of the pilot sites — clean energy, cold chain, livelihood value chains, ecosystem restoration, and community resilience — tailored to local conditions.
• Overseeing deployment, commissioning, and early operation of site infrastructure and activities, including solar-battery systems, cold-chain equipment (e.g., solar ice makers, cold storage), and restoration interventions.
• Building and managing the local alliance at each site — convening government, conservation, development, private-sector, and community partners around a shared site plan.
• Capturing and validating the model's cost, revenue, and ecological assumptions, and producing the evidence and documentation that supports financing and replication.
• Managing the program budget, workplan, risks, and reporting across the full portfolio of pilots.

Key Responsibilities

1. Technical leadership across program components

• Provide integrated technical direction across all five intervention areas, ensuring interventions reinforce rather than fragment at each site.
• Translate the Sun to Sea model into standardized, replicable site blueprints while allowing for local adaptation.
• Direct and quality-assure the work of specialist consultants across clean energy, fisheries, marine ecology, economics, and finance.
• Oversee the technical design of site energy systems (microgrids, diesel replacement, refurbishment) and cold-chain solutions, ensuring alignment with PLN standards and productive-use requirements.
• Guide the design of blue carbon components (mangrove, seagrass, reef restoration), including the financial bridge that carbon advance purchases provide while productive-use revenues ramp up.
• Ensure rigorous baselines, monitoring, and data collection so that cost, revenue, and ecological assumptions are genuinely validated.

1. Government engagement and policy alignment

• Guided by and in support of GEA Indonesia Country Lead and KI Senior Vice President, serve as a senior interlocutor with relevant Indonesian government agencies, building and maintaining trusted relationships at national and provincial levels.
• Align pilots with the Red & White Fishing Villages initiative and the 100 GW Solarization initiative, and position Sun to Sea as a connector between them.
• Engage and coordinate with key agencies and entities including the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (KKP/MMAF), the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM/MEMR), PLN, the Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs and the Energy Transition Acceleration Task Force, BAPPENAS, relevant carbon and environment authorities, and the Provincial Government of Maluku and other relevant Provincial governments after the additional 10 pilot sites are identified.
• Support co-financing discussions through ministry budgets and financing facilities, and navigate regulatory and permitting requirements across fisheries, marine resources, energy, and carbon rights.
• Lay the groundwork for eventual government ownership of the program by embedding alignment with national planning from the outset.

1. Team leadership

• Lead, manage, and integrate a multidisciplinary team of international and national consultants into a single delivery team with shared objectives.
• Set workplans, allocate tasks, manage performance, and ensure consistent quality across deliverables.
• Foster collaboration across disciplines so that energy, ecology, livelihoods, finance, and community work cohere at the site level.
• Mentor and build the capacity of national consultants and local stakeholders, strengthening the local delivery ecosystem the program depends on at scale.

1. Partnership, alliance, and stakeholder management

• Build and convene tailored coalitions of partners around each site — government, conservation organizations, development and technical partners (e.g., GIZ, IPNLF, MDPI, UNDP), multilateral development banks, private-sector offtakers and technology providers, and local stakeholders.
• Coordinate closely with KI on community engagement, conservation delivery, and governance, including existing local systems such as Sasi Laut in Maluku.
• Negotiate and steward offtake, co-investment, and partnership arrangements at site level.
• Center gender equity throughout, ensuring women are primary actors in value chains and governance, consistent with the program's design.

1. Program delivery, finance, and reporting

• Lead implementation of the master workplan, budget, and risk register across all 20 pilots, ensuring on-time, on-budget delivery.
• Work with the economist and financial engineering specialist to validate unit economics and to inform the program's financing architecture and the case for Phase 2.
• Report to GEAPP and KI leadership and to funders, producing clear progress, financial, and results reporting.
• Document lessons, costs, and replicable blueprints to support the transition from validation to replication.

Team You Will Lead

The Sun to Sea Manager will direct a team of international and national consultants, such as:

• Coastal / marine ecologist
• Fisheries specialist
• Solar engineer
• Community development specialist
• Private sector specialist
• Economist
• Financial engineering specialist

Qualifications and Experience

Essential

• Advanced degree in a relevant field (e.g., energy, engineering, natural resource management, marine/environmental science, development economics, or related), or equivalent senior professional experience.
• 12+ years of progressive experience leading complex, multi-stakeholder development, energy, conservation, or coastal/blue-economy programs, including significant experience in Indonesia or comparable archipelagic/emerging-market contexts.
• Demonstrated technical breadth across several of the program's components — clean energy and/or cold chain, fisheries or coastal livelihoods, marine ecosystem restoration, and the economics or financing of community-scale infrastructure — with the credibility to integrate them.
• Proven track record engaging Indonesian government agencies at national and provincial levels.
• Demonstrated success leading multidisciplinary teams of international and national experts to deliver against ambitious timelines and budgets.
• Strong program and financial management capability across a portfolio of sites or projects.
• Excellent stakeholder, partnership, and communication skills, including with funders, private-sector partners, and communities.
• Professional fluency in English and Bahasa Indonesia.

Desirable

• Direct experience in Eastern Indonesia, including familiarity with local governance systems (e.g., Sasi Laut).
• Familiarity with blue carbon project development, carbon markets, and advance-purchase mechanisms.
• Experience structuring blended finance, productive-use investment, or co-financing with DFIs/MDBs and government.
• Experience designing programs with gender equity as a core design principle.
• Established relationships with conservation organizations, development partners, and private-sector offtakers active in Indonesia's coastal economy.

Core Competencies

• Systems thinker who can hold the whole integrated model while managing detail at site level.
• Diplomatic and credible in government and high-level partnership settings.
• Decisive, delivery-oriented, and comfortable with ambiguity in a model still being proven.
• Collaborative leader who builds trust across cultures, disciplines, and institutions.
• Committed to community ownership, conservation outcomes, and equitable benefit sharing.