Product Manager at BFA (Bankable Frontier Associates)

About the Product Manager Role

We are looking for a Product Manager who can support Jobtech and TECA startups to improve their product offering based on identified users’ needs and problems, define product strategies such as roadmaps prioritisation or potential partnerships, analyse and understand the viability and sustainability of the product, and ultimately, to move Jobtech and TECA startups closer to product market fit.

What You’ll Do

As a Product Manager, your responsibilities will include the following:

• Support Jobtech and TECA startups in creating product development roadmaps and contribute to their overall product strategy.
• Successfully kick-off product development, including setting and testing hypotheses, doing customer research to understand users’ needs and validate ideas, and managing sprints and backlog grooming.
• Participate at any of the Product Life Cycle stages from discovery to ideation and/or idea validation, collaboratively with researchers, designers, and engineers, and translate user needs into product solutions.
• Analyse the viability and sustainability of various products and their features and appropriateness, given local markets and user preferences.
• Manage the execution of the product development roadmap, ensuring that milestones are met and progress is made iteratively.
• Lead projects with startup teams and BFA Global experts such as growth hackers, UX designers, researchers, and data analysts.
• Use analytics platforms to monitor and understand product metrics such as engagement and retention, funnels, or conversions (i.e. Firebase, Mixpanel or Amplitude).
• Analyse customer journeys and identify areas for optimisation. Use data insights that can ultimately improve the product.
• Design and run experiments to validate hypotheses cost-effectively.
• Create and disseminate knowledge products (presentations at high-profile industry events, blog posts, focus notes, case studies, white papers, best practice documents etc.) through appropriate channels.
• Proactively incorporate cutting-edge theoretical and practical methodologies while implementing technology-driven solutions.
• Keep up with the upcoming trends in technology and constantly strive to learn and improve on the same.
• Conduct user research based on the application by the startups.
• Additional tasks will depend on project requirements determined by our client-driven work.

Qualifications & Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degrees in Engineering, Computer Science or Statistics, or equivalent, MBAs are also a plus.
• Qualifications in human-centred design principal (HDC) or human-centred interaction design (HCI) will be an added advantage.
• Experience serving as a lead in projects with engineers, data scientists, UI/UX specialists, and designers.
• Demonstrated success defining, launching and managing e-commerce or digital financial products (fintech) such as credit, savings/investments, or insurance, among others.
• Expertise in lean product management, including design sprints, value proposition design, hypothesis-driven experimentation, roadmaps prioritisation, etc.
• At least 5+ years of experience managing digital products (USSD, SMS, mobile apps, web apps, data products) and should have experience in low connectivity areas.
• Must demonstrate the ability to think on your feet, i.e. a “hacker” mentality
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, startup environment, with strong attention to detail for all tasks
• Ability to complete tasks promptly while balancing several assignments with inputs from multiple team members

Any of the following will be considered a plus:

• Familiarity with financial inclusion and digital financial services innovation for low-income populations, economic development or social business sector.
• Familiarity working with different cultures and languages
• Experience with product management for low-income populations and/or in low-connectivity environments (i.e. USSD or SMS-based products)
• Spoken and written language proficiency in English. Proficiency in French will be an added advantage.