Product Owner at NCBA Group

Job Purpose Statement

The role holder is in charge of a product throughout its product lifecycle. That includes working out what customers want, helping the business to build the right product, and then supporting the business to sell it. They also provide the product vision and leadership for the many other roles involved in developing, supporting, marketing, and selling the product. That includes ensuring the product supports the company’s strategy and goals.

The Product Manager role is responsible for designing, developing, promoting and maintaining products and delivery channels that meet the needs of target customers/markets, at profit.

The role is central to innovation in Loop DFS and is thus the steward to the department’s innovation management process. The role holder is responsible for product management for the allocated portfolio/markets in the countries that we operate in.

Key Accountabilities (Duties and Responsibilities)

Product Acceleration (35%)

• Manage feature development end-to-end; provide guidance and feedback to Product Analysts and Engineers, ensuring everyone is aligned.
• Take ownership of products to drive the product and business-planning process across cross-functional teams of the company.
• Be the voice of the customer in the product development process.
• Develop use cases documentation and mock-ups for proposed customer journeys.
• Collaborate with Managers in Customer Management, Operations, Portfolio Management, Data Science, and Engineers in cross-area features to build products.
• Drive teams to acquire necessary data to back assumptions, show value, and drive prioritization.

Product Strategy (30%)

• Develop product positioning and messaging that differentiates our products and features across primary market segments.
• Define initial product propositions and go-to-market strategies for new expansion markets.
• Align stakeholders around the vision for the product and prioritize product features and capabilities.
• Meet with the C-suite to discuss financial data and ways to improve business operations.

Customer (20%)

• Develop a deep understanding of our users and gauge customer needs to propose prospective solutions.
• Drive the execution of all product lifecycle processes, including product research, market research, competitive analysis, planning, positioning, roadmap development, requirements development, and product launch.
• Work with the Senior Product Manager to identify potential opportunity areas, determine the impact for our customers, and implement the most effective course of action.
• Run experiments to improve signup conversion ratios, lead-to-customer conversion ratios, time-to-value for new customers, and the adoption of new features.
• Send quality messages and notifications to customers at the right time.
• Remove bad friction from the user experience.

Learning and Growth (15%)

• Drive Employee Engagement initiatives within the Product department.
• Maintain high performance and personal growth.
• Help team members achieve their career growth plans.
• Ensure up-to-date and actionable competency assessments and development plans.
• Foster close collaboration among staff and relevant stakeholders across the Group to cultivate collective responsibility for achieving business goals.

Job Specifications

Academic:

• At least an undergraduate degree Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related quantitative subject area; or equivalent experience.

Desired Work Experience:

• 5+ years of product management experience shipping world-class products at fast growing companies and have had demonstrable engagement with Design, Engineering and Leadership teams.
• Knowledge of multiple functional areas, including product management, engineering, UX/UI, sales, customer support, finance or marketing.
• Understanding of go-to-market commerce enablers (e.g., payments, loyalty, subscriptions, etc.).
• Exceptional communicator, with the ability to generate stakeholder buy-in and influence cross-functionally to a high standard
• Extensive experience building intuitive UI and premium UX for large feature sets on small screens
• Extremely data driven with the understanding that perfect data is not available but knows the importance of what pragmatic assumptions can be made to drive reasonable decisions
• Proven experience shipping a breadth of high-quality product features at a Fintech company
• Ability to achieve strategic goals and evolve product strategy based on research, data and industry trends in an innovative and fast-paced environment.
• Excellent problem-solving, organizational and analytical skills.
• Strong empathy for customers and an unwillingness to compromise on user-centered design
• Experience in working with third parties, whether it’s evaluating APIs and capabilities, mapping out integration plans or evaluating different technology options
• Ability to influence multiple stakeholders without direct authority.
• Experience with using A/B testing as tool to inform product improvements
• Proven capabilities in leading design thinking/co-creation engagements with leaders at senior levels.
• Proven experience in managing medium size & diverse teams; ideally experience managing creative teams of designers and developers