Reporting to the Eastern Africa Area MD, the position of Tanzania Country Manager requires strong commercial leadership qualities to drive growth and profitability in a highly complex yet interesting business environment with vast business opportunities. Based in Dar es Salaam, the role leads the Maersk organization in Tanzania, and manages teams in Dar es Salaam, Tanga and Zanzibar. The Tanzania Country Manager is an integral part of the Area Leadership Team.
The Country Manager is the senior-most Maersk leader in Tanzania and is accountable for the end-to-end leadership, strategic direction and sustainable performance of the country business. The role owns the country P&L and leads commercial growth, Logistics & Services (L&S), first-mile operations, depot activities, fleet management, customer experience, people performance, operational excellence, safety, compliance and stakeholder engagement.
The Country Manager translates Area and regional priorities into a clear Tanzania strategy, builds a high-performing leadership team and represents Maersk with customers, employees, partners, government institutions and regulatory bodies. The successful candidate will be a commercially astute and externally oriented leader who can connect customer needs, operational capabilities and market opportunities while protecting Maersk's license to operate and reputation.
The mandate: Lead the Tanzania business as an enterprise leader: grow profitably, deepen L&S capabilities, strengthen execution across first mile, depot, fleet operations, other logistics solutions, and build trusted relationships across the logistics ecosystem.
What We Offer:
When you join Maersk, you’ll find that the world is your workplace. You’ll work in a culturally diverse, stimulating environment, surrounded by new ideas and different ways of doing things. We believe in individual performance within highly professional teams supported by our distinctive values. To us teamwork means acceptance, respect, dedication, and the idea that we can achieve more when we all pull together.
Living our values means competing in the marketplace in an ethical way so our name is synonymous with being a credible and valuable business partner. Through Constant Care and Humbleness, we strive to prepare for the future, while never forgetting that our customers and competitors are key to our ability to improve. In our daily work Uprightness and Our Employees mean that transparency and accountability in everything we do go hand in hand with being an inspiring, challenging place to work. At Maersk, we take pride in hiring the best person for the job – irrespective of gender, age, nationality, or religious belief.
Key Responsibilities:
Strategy and country leadership
- Define and execute the Tanzania country strategy in alignment with Area, regional and global priorities.
- Translate the strategy into clear commercial, operational, financial, customer and people priorities with measurable outcomes.
- Maintain a strong understanding of Tanzania's trade flows, economic environment, infrastructure landscape, customer needs and competitive dynamics.
- Identify growth opportunities and lead the transformation required to build a scalable, resilient and future-ready country business.
- Act as the senior Maersk representative in Tanzania and foster collaboration across products, functions and geographies.
Financial performance and P&L ownership
- Own the country P&L and deliver agreed revenue, gross profit, EBIT, cash, cost and productivity targets.
- Lead annual business planning, budgeting, forecasting and investment prioritization; intervene early where performance is off track.
- Ensure disciplined pricing, yield, cost-to-serve, and working-capital management across the portfolio.
- Maintain robust financial controls, business governance, and timely closure of audit actions.
- Balance growth, service, risk and return when making major customer, asset and operating decisions.
Commercial growth and customer leadership
- Own the country's growth agenda and drive acquisition, retention and share-of-wallet expansion across strategic customers.
- Accelerate profitable growth across integrated Logistics & Services offerings, including inland transportation, first mile, depot and container services, freight forwarding, customs services, warehousing, distribution and end-to-end supply chain solutions.
- Build executive relationships with strategic customers and personally sponsor high-value opportunities, renewals and critical issue resolution.
- Ensure a healthy pipeline, rigorous opportunity management, strong contract discipline and cross-selling across products.
- Champion a customer-centric culture and ensure that customer commitments are translated into reliable operational delivery.
Logistics & Services operational leadership
- Provide strategic and performance leadership across the Tanzania L&S portfolio, ensuring safe, reliable, compliant and cost-effective execution.
- Drive operational KPIs for service reliability, productivity, asset utilization, quality, claims, cost and customer outcomes.
- Lead continuous improvement, standardization, digital adoption, and operational control across sites and service partners.
- Ensure operating capacity and capabilities to support current customer commitments and future growth.
- Strengthen collaboration between Commercial, Customer Experience, Operations, Finance and functional teams to deliver seamless end-to-end solutions.
First mile, depot and fleet management
- Oversee performance of first-mile logistics, including customer pickup, origin coordination, cargo readiness, dispatch planning and handover into the wider transport network.
- Ensure depot operations deliver strong safety, throughput, turnaround time, equipment control, inventory accuracy, repair quality and customer service.
- Lead fleet strategy and performance, whether owned, leased or subcontracted, with a clear focus on utilization, routing, fuel efficiency, maintenance, driver performance, road safety and total cost of ownership.
- Ensure robust management of transporters, vendors, depot partners and other third parties through clear service levels, performance reviews and risk controls.
- Drive compliance with transport, customs, port, environmental, occupational health and safety, and other operational requirements applicable in Tanzania.
Stakeholder and regulatory engagement
- Build and sustain trusted relationships with internal stakeholders across Area, regional and global teams, including Product, Commercial, Finance, People, Legal, Compliance, Safety, Security, Technology and Customer Experience.
- Represent Maersk credibly with external stakeholders including customers, logistics partners, suppliers, industry associations, port and corridor stakeholders, local communities and professional bodies.
- Develop constructive working relationships with relevant Tanzanian ministries, government agencies and regulatory bodies, including authorities connected to ports, customs, transport, revenue, labour, investment, competition, safety and the environment.
- Anticipate regulatory and policy developments, assess business impact, and coordinate timely organisational responses.
- Protect Maersk's reputation and license to operate through transparent, ethical, and proactive engagement.
- People leadership and organisational capability
- Lead, inspire and develop the Country Leadership Team, creating clarity, accountability and strong cross-functional execution.
- Build a high-performance, inclusive, customer-focused and safety-led culture anchored in Maersk values.
- Attract, retain and develop strong talent; establish succession coverage for critical leadership and specialist roles.
- Ensure effective performance management, capability building, employee engagement and organisational health.
- Lead change with empathy and discipline, communicating context and expectations clearly through periods of transformation.
Governance, risk, safety and compliance
- Ensure compliance with Tanzanian laws, regulatory requirements and Maersk policies, standards and Code of Conduct.
- Maintain oversight of operational, financial, legal, customs, trade compliance, security, safety, people and reputational risks.
- Champion a strong safety culture across offices, depots, fleet, first-mile operations and third-party activities.
- Ensure effective crisis management, incident response and business continuity readiness.
- Maintain zero tolerance for unethical conduct and ensure concerns are addressed promptly and appropriately.
Who Are We Looking For?
Education and qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in business, Logistics, Supply Chain, Engineering, Economics or a related discipline.
- MBA, postgraduate business qualification, or relevant professional certification would be advantageous.
Experience and industry expertise
- Substantial senior leadership experience in logistics, supply chain, transportation, freight forwarding, shipping or a closely related B2B service industry.
- Solid, hands-on experience in Logistics & Services, with a strong understanding of integrated supply-chain solutions and operational economics.
- Demonstrated experience leading first-mile operations, depot activities and fleet management in a complex and safety-critical environment.
- Proven ownership of a sizeable P&L and track record of delivering profitable growth, cost improvement and business transformation.
- Strong commercial experience spanning business development, strategic account leadership, solution selling, pricing and contract negotiation.
- Experience leading multidisciplinary teams across Commercial, Operations, Customer Experience, Finance and enabling functions.
- Excellent stakeholder-management experience across a matrix organisation and with external stakeholders, including customers, partners, government institutions and regulatory bodies in Tanzania.
- Strong knowledge of the Tanzanian business, logistics and regulatory environment; experience across East African trade corridors is an advantage.
- Experience working in a multinational, networked or highly matrixed organisation is strongly preferred.
Additional requirements
- Fluent written and spoken English; working proficiency in Kiswahili is strongly preferred.
- Willingness and ability to travel within Tanzania and across the wider Area as required.
- Demonstrated commitment to safety, ethical conduct, inclusion and responsible business practices.
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Maersk is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace, and we embrace different styles of thinking. Maersk is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applicants without regard to race, colour, gender, sex, age, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy or parental leave, veteran status, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with all legal requirements.
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