Regional Product Manager at Chancen International

Main Job Purpose

• The Group Product Manager is responsible for the product roadmap and delivery oversight across Chancen's two technology streams: operational automation (Layer 1 and Layer 3, owned by Central IT/MIS) and the Chancen Companion product (Layer 2, owned by Chancen Tech). This is not a coordination role — it is a builder role. The Group PM owns the product backlog, drives prioritisation, translates operational insight into product decisions, builds prototypes, and ensures that what gets built actually gets used.
• The role reports to the CEO as Product Owner and works in close partnership with the Head of IT, the Group SysDev Manager.

Responsibilities

Product strategy and roadmap ownership

• Own and maintain the Group product roadmap across automation and the Chancen Companion, aligned to Chancen's 2026 OKRs and the Technology and Automation Strategy
• Prioritise the product backlog using the Opportunity Scoring methodology — ensuring decisions are grounded in operational evidence, OKR alignment, and user impact, not technology preference
• Lead the quarterly product review at the Technology Steering Committee, presenting roadmap progress, trade-offs, and recommended priorities.
• Make and document Build vs Buy recommendations for significant technology decisions, in accordance with the framework set out in the Technology and Automation Strategy
• Translate the feedback loop between operations and innovation into concrete product decisions — ensuring what country teams are experiencing informs what Chancen Tech builds next.

Chancen Companion product management

• Own the product requirements and feature backlog for the Chancen Companion across all three markets, working directly with CTO and the Chancen Tech team
• Build prototypes stemming from the above requirements, in close collaboration with the CTO. This role expects pre-existing skills and/or willingness to learn AI-native workflows.
• Drive the rollout programme currently underway: Kenya full rollout, South Africa and Rwanda beta and soft launch phases, and the expansion to all users per market
• Gather structured feedback from internal users (country operations staff) and external users (students and members) and translate it into product improvements
• Monitor engagement, adoption, and user satisfaction metrics across all markets — and make calls on what to change, add, or stop
• Contribute to the positioning of the Companion as an external B2B product, ensuring it is always designed as if the customer is a financial institution, not just Chancen's own teams
• Explore and propose AI-powered features within the Companion that could improve financial coaching, repayment behaviour, and member outcomes.
• Operational automation oversight
• Work with Country Product & Systems Managers across Rwanda, Kenya, and South Africa to review submitted automation opportunities, score them against the methodology, and advise on prioritisation for the IT Steerco
• Ensure the nine-step automation methodology is being applied consistently across countries — and that Discovery Steps (Identify, Map, Design) produce quality inputs before anything moves to Build
• Collaborate actively with the CTO and Country teams during the Build phase steps.
• Own the product sign-off at Pilot and Rollout) — the Group PM is the person who confirms a solution is genuinely ready, not just technically complete

User insight and continuous improvement

• Run structured feedback sessions with country staff, students, and PEIs to surface pain points and unmet needs — this is the primary input for both automation prioritisation and Companion product decisions
• Analyse usage data, support ticket patterns, and adoption metrics to identify where solutions are working and where they are not
• Maintain a clear distinction between what is a product problem, what is a training problem, and what is a process problem — and ensure each is addressed in the right way

AI and emerging technology

• Stay current with AI tools and applications relevant to financial inclusion, youth engagement, education finance, and operational automation
• Identify practical AI use cases within the Chancen context — for both the Companion (member-facing coaching, repayment nudges, financial literacy) and internal operations (risk assessment, portfolio monitoring, reporting)
• Brief the Head of IT and central team on emerging tools and approaches that could raise the ceiling of what Chancen's technology can do.  Run capability-building workshops, hackathons and similar internal events.

Person Specification

Essential

• Based in Rwanda, Kenya or South Africa — this role requires deep contextual understanding of the markets Chancen operates in and the communities we serve. Applications from outside Africa will not be considered
• Genuine obsession with financial inclusion — you should be able to speak at length about why access to education finance matters, what the gaps are across the continent, and where the opportunity lies.
• This is not a line on a CV; it should be evident from your work history and how you think
• Proven product management experience — minimum 7 years of experience, at least four years in a product role, with clear examples of owning a backlog, driving prioritisation, and delivering working software in a resource-constrained environment
• Experience working across multiple countries or markets simultaneously, ideally within Africa
• Comfort with AI tools in practice — not theoretical knowledge, but demonstrated use of AI in your own work, with a view on where it creates real value and where it does not
• Strong analytical instincts — able to read data, identify patterns, and make product decisions based on evidence rather than opinion
• Excellent written and verbal communication in English — this role produces written artefacts (roadmaps, requirement documents, sprint review summaries, steering committee reports) that need to be clear and actionable

Strongly preferred

• Experience in fintech, financial services, or edtech — ideally in a context where the end users are low-income or underserved communities
• Familiarity with agile sprint delivery and working directly alongside software developers
• Understanding of data systems, APIs, and system integrations at a conceptual level — you do not need to be a developer, but you need to understand the implications of technical decisions for product
• Experience with conversational AI products, chatbots, or WhatsApp-based user engagement
• Ability to turn requirements into evaluation datasets highly desired.
• French or Kinyarwanda language skills an advantage given our Rwanda operations