Technical Product Manager – Digital Channels at Equity Bank Kenya

Job Purpose

The role of Technology Product Manager – Digital Channels at Equity Groupwill be a key member of our IT & Operations organization, responsible for the technical direction, strategy, prioritization, design, development, and overall delivery of world-class digital experiences that resonate with how our customers live their lives. This role will be the link between the business and IT. There will be a focus on the overall success of highly visible and prioritized efforts, and you will own and drive overall planning and project execution. This position requires strong leadership skills, a capability to build effective technical-project teams, and a results-driven attitude. To deliver to expectations, you will collaborate and partner closely with Senior Product and Channel managers, key business stakeholders, and business teams along with various IT & Ops teams. You will be responsible for gathering business stakeholder and customer needs and translating them into a product plan and roadmap. The team will scope appropriate solutions for test, including conducting analysis to optimize existing products/solutions, set success objectives, define technical solutions, drive development with internal and external partners, and work cross-functionally to build next generation products. You will have the freedom, support, and encouragement to think big and prove out new experiences and disruptive solutions on behalf of our customers. To fit in, you must believe in the power of APIs, be jazzed about delivering amazingly simple experiences that transform and improve people’s lives through simple, straightforward digital tools and technology. You must throw everything back to the customer, ensuring you deliver on solving a need for the customer, in addition to delivering business value through a technically sound product.
 
Qualifications

Job Responsibilities/Accountabilities

Strategy, Planning & Execution

• Build effective relationships with key internal business, operations, IT, product, design, and external partner teams.
• Stakeholder Management: strategy, tactical execution, communications, etc. Work collaboratively with C-levelexecutives, Product owners and other key stakeholders in the organization.
• Lead the definition of product requirements using input from various sources including external sources such as market trends, technology innovations, industry standards, bold intelligence, and customer research, as well as internal sources such as analytics, marketing, operations, and customer feedback.
• Manage feature prioritization & tradeoff decision making in collaboration with other Technical Product Managers, business & engineering teams and ensure alignment of business goals with the incremental delivery of solutions.
• Lead the design and conceptualization of the customer experience including the look & feel of the customer journeys, development of functional designs and wireframes, creation ofproduct collateral, and user interfaces.
• Ensure delivery of scalable, reliable, and maintainable platforms and solutions
• Assess the business impact of different solutions and the tradeoffs between customer needs, technology requirements and costs.
• Work closely with peer Technical Product Managers across all products and channels capabilities to prioritize initiatives, share insights on customer demands, identify opportunities for teamwork, and coordinate product development and delivery.
• Serve as a product evangelist & subject matter expert to the technical/developer community.
• Ensure Knowledge Transfer and hand off to Support teams and users.
• Assess & address all delivery risks.
•  Define success criteria for product acceptance.

Knowledge & Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in information technology, engineering, or related field required.
• Minimum five (3+) years’ experience as a technical product manager or similar role related to product creation and management, in financial services, retail banking or related field

Personal Attributes

• Demonstrated leadership, maturity, and organizational abilities.
• Strong written & verbal communication skills
• Superior interpersonal & collaboration skills with demonstrated ability to use diplomacy & communication skills to influence outcomes and influence others without authority.
• Experience and expertise in project planning, including product definition, feature prioritization, trade-off processes, and roadmap creation.
• Strong analytical skills with hands on experience in conducting technological analyses of business problems developing technical roadmaps, story outlines, writing user stories, refining product backlogs, and coordinating/prioritizing conflicting requirements in a fast-paced, demanding environment.
• Proven record of cross functional leadership in a global, multicultural organization
• Ability to work across geographies, understand the diverse cultures and manage people and partners cross culturally is a must.
• Ability to work independently, without the need for day-to-day guidance, make independent decisions and influence positive outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability manage multiple projects simultaneously
• Experience leading a team of Technical Product Managers and maintain an organized oversight of specific product delivery schedules to ensure the proper balance of speed, features, timing, and integration with other functions, in tight coordination with Program and Project Management
• Ability to set expectations and hold individuals and team members accountable to their commitments.
• Experience with Design Thinking or similar empathydriven customer-focused design methodologies.
• Financial services and Digital technology experience.
• Customer-centric mindset with a passion for discovering consumer behavior, trends, and opportunities for innovation.