Job Opportunities at One Acre Fund - 5 Positions

Duration

Minimum 2-year commitment for full-time career role

Job Description

One Acre Fund began in Kenya and it is now one of our largest and fastest-growing countries of operation. Our vision for 2030 is to end hunger in Kenya and provide a pathway to prosperity for every farm family in the nation. One Acre Fund Kenya is transitioning from a start-up to a mature operation – and we need additional high performing staff members to continue our strong growth trajectory. Working with our Kenya team presents the opportunity to build upon our strong operational foundations and explore new ways to impact our well-established network of hundreds of thousands of farm families. The work of the People Division Deputy would include, but not be limited to:

1. Strategy & Vision
   • Together with the division director, set and steer course for the 5-15-year vision.
   • Ensure department annual plans align with long-term vision and targets.
   • Measure progress against goals, regularly report on progress, hold the team accountable to prioritizing and delivering results in key strategic areas.
   • Prepare our people departments to scale rapidly, allowing OAF deliver rural services to 500,000 clients through 3,000 staff members by 2020.
   • Hold Kenya program accountable to meet career promises to all staff – meaningful work, career growth and fair compensation.
2. Communication
   • Proactively and effectively communicate up to the division director and country leadership, down to departments, across to other sets of leaders.
   • Ensure People Departments are collaborating effectively with individuals, teams and divisions outside of the people division. Set-up appropriate systems of communication to keep everyone moving together.
   • Participate in global people work and collaborate with other country programs.
3. Management & Training
   • Serve as direct or secondary management line to 1-3 key people departments in Kenya. These departments could include: Corporate Operations, Human Resources, Training, Recruitment, Analytics, and Infrastructure. Management will include oversight, weekly reporting meetings, performance reviews and development, strategic direction and support.
   • Personally lead training sessions for senior staff members.
4. Team & Culture
   • Serve as a leader and role model to the Kenya team at large. This should include a consistent demonstration of One Acre Fund core values, modeling a sustainable work/life balance, investing in the development of your team, and investment in team culture.
   • Keep the pulse on team feedback, concerns, and upcoming events that might be destabilizing.
   • Actively contingency plan and mitigate risk areas that could destabilize staff or operations.
5. Execution of Strategic Initiatives
   • Ensure that the People Division adheres to world-class standards of execution.
   • Set KPI’s and metrics to measure success.
   • Regularly solicit feedback from the wider team and other departments.
   • Spending and Budgeting
     • Participate, together with departments, in annual budgeting process; anticipate spending for the year based on annual plans.
     • Regularly review actual spending against planned spending. Keep all departments operating to maximum efficiency and within planned budget.
6. Outside & External

• Occasionally host key external visitors and donors to One Acre Fund.
• Research and understand key best practices in functional work areas at other organizations.
• Think strategically about potential partnerships and learning opportunities from other organizations.

 Career Growth and Development

One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager and a global support team will commit significant time in your career development. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and through regular management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about. Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions.

Qualifications

We are seeking an exceptional professional with 4+ years of work experience a demonstrated passion for international development. Candidates fitting the following profile are strongly encouraged to apply:

• HR/Talent management experience.
• Strong people management experience (at least 3 years of managing a team of highly skilled workers).
• Strong leadership experiences with the demonstrated ability to lead a team to accomplish its goals.
• High emotional intelligence: Self-regulation and empathy in particular.
• A true team player: You’ll be willing to do whatever it takes to help the Kenya team.
• Excellent judgment in sensitive people issues, management skills, creative problem solving.
• Strong communication skills, both written and oral.
• Humility. We are looking for passionate professionals who combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service to join our growing family of leaders.
• A willingness to commit to living in rural areas of East Africa for at least two years – this is a long-term, career-track role. The ideal candidate will have at least one year of demonstrated experience working in the developing world, although this is not a strict requirement.
• Language: English required. Swahili-speakers strongly preferred.

Preferred Start Date

As soon as possible, although flexible for the right candidate

Compensation

We offer a modest starting salary that affords a high quality of life in our areas of operation. This is a career-track role with performance-based raises and the ability to expand responsibilities over time.

Benefits

Health insurance, immunizations, flights, housing.

Sponsor International Candidates

Yes

East Africans are strongly encouraged to apply

go to method of application »

Duration:

Minimum 2 years’ commitment, full-time job.

Job Description

One Acre Fund is looking for an exceptional individual to join our Business Development team. This position will be based in Nairobi and will work primarily within the public funding team. We are looking for someone with very strong monitoring, evaluation and reporting skills and a good base of knowledge in international development, especially with bilateral and multilateral donor agencies. This is an excellent position for a highly skilled and experienced professional looking for a meaningful development opportunity. The individual will play a strong support role within the Business Development unit and their workload will primarily be focused on the following

Monitoring and Evaluation – This person will be the focal point for all monitoring and evaluation tasks on the Business Development team. This will involve:

• Track and manage all public funding data, coordinating with the field teams for project and proposal development and reporting, and attending in-field donor meetings (as required). This role will connect effectively with program/field teams – plugging into specific program areas as required by the specific grant.
• Track, report on and facilitate donor compliance with monitoring and evaluation policies and procedures, including ensuring that Performance Management Plans (PMPs) are regularly updated and data quality assessments conducted on all performance indicators for public funding projects.
• Coordinate and consolidate input from our M&E team for the preparation, analysis and timely submission of Quarterly, Annual and Semi-Annual Program Reports and ensure follow-up to track, oversee and verify large volumes of data collected from the M&E team prior to consolidation into donor reports.
• Collaborate with the team to prepare accurate pipeline levels and future resource requests especially for various proposals.
• Ensure program teams are fully trained on M&E and donor reporting requirements as outlined in grant agreement
• Analyze quantitative and qualitative data and present reports on findings to the Business Development team.
• Develop databases, spreadsheets or other tools to ensure that data is compiled and readily available.
• Other duties as assigned.

Report writing - Manage the end-to-end process of writing and editing complex grant proposals and reports with a specific focus on public funded projects. This will involve directly writing high quality proposals and reports.

• Grant Writing – Write and assemble compelling reports to donors and funders, as well as proposals in collaboration with other members of the team.
• Reporting – Assist with the preparation of required progress and final reports, including compiling necessary information from program and finance staff, drafting written reports, and submitting all reports in a timely manner.
• Report Presentation - Develop clear ways to represent, summarize and communicate data analysis verbally and in writing (e.g., graphics) to inform reporting requirements, project communications for internal and external use.
• Statistical Research – Research information and statistics needed to support proposals and reports. Monitor developments within the development sector using published reports and articles.
• Donor Engagement – Attend necessary donor meetings and grant workshops. Coordinate site visits from donors, interact with and respond to questions from government and donor representatives, and participate in relevant discussions and meetings.

Some key characteristics of our writing:

• We do not copy and paste – we tailor our language to each new funder. Most of our funders are quite sophisticated, which keeps our proposals dynamic and interesting to work on.
• We emphasize simple and powerful prose built into a clear logical flow of ideas.
• We make heavy use of M&E results from the field, and the centerpiece of most projects is our most recent data on program scale, impact, and sustainability.
• We often prepare for our writing with significant research; an ideal candidate would be a skilled and enthusiastic researcher.

Aside from the tasks listed above, the individual will also be expected to stay apprised of One Acre Fund’s public funding portfolio and may be called to provide additional ad hoc support for the team as needed.

Career Growth and Development

One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager and a global support team will commit significant time in your career development. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and through regular management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about. Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions.  

Qualifications

We are seeking an exceptional professional with 5+ years of work experience in international development. Qualified candidates should possess excellent writing and computer skills (Microsoft Office Word, Powerpoint and Excel), and database management skills. The candidate must be highly organized with the ability to implement systems and follow-up processes, able to effectively work under pressure, use independent judgment and produce a quality work product within tight time constraints. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Strong work experience in international development; ideally at least 2 years’ experience engaging with public funding donors (ex: USAID, SIDA, DFID etc).
• 3-5 years of experience in report-writing and product delivery to tight deadlines.
• Excellent research and writing skills and experience conducting research in a professional environment.
• Leadership experience at work, or outside of work.
• Experience coordinating events and/or handling complex logistical requests.
• Analytical and communication skills and ability to assimilate and process information for wide-ranging audiences.
• Documentation preparation/presentation and computer-based production skills
• Exceptional organizational ability with an eye for detail
• Able to work independently and as part of the team
• Inter-personal skills and cultural sensitivity.
• Top-performing undergraduate background (include final grade/marks/GPA).

Start date

ASAP

Compensation

We offer a modest starting salary that affords a high quality of life in our areas of operation. This is a career-track role with performance-based raises and the ability to expand responsibilities over time.

Benefits

Health insurance, immunizations, flight, room and board.

Sponsor International Candidates

No

go to method of application »

Duration

Minimum 3 years commitment, full-time job

Job Description

One Acre Fund orders and distributes improved farm inputs across thousands of rural sites to generate 50% in farm profit improvements for every client we serve. All this starts will purchasing over $40M worth of agricultural and non-agricultural inputs for farmers in 2017. Accurate forecasting, proactive order coordination, and rock-solid data management and reporting systems are mission critical to ensuring farmers receive the resources they need to grow themselves out of poverty.

We’re looking for one key person to be the central hub interfacing between purchasers, field units, logistics teams, and finance and accounting. This person will start by developing a team of 2 direct reports and will be the lead coordinator for a couple dozen people across the organization. In this role, you’ll be asked to drive supply chain efficiency, eliminate waste across the value chain, and reduce supply risk across 8 countries by setting a high bar for forecast accuracy, data integrity, and effective communication. We’ll be asking you to play a key role optimizing $40M in annual spend while preparing our operations for scale to ultimately deliver high quality live improving goods at the feet of the 500,000 smallholder farmers we serve.

Responsibilities of the Supply Chain Operations Associate role will be:

• Be the key coordinator between procurement staff and over 2 dozen internal customers across 6 core countries and 2 pilot programs
• Collaborate with country leadership and logistics teams to maximize end-to-end supply chain efficiency, eliminate waste from the value chain, and save costs
• Leverage forecasting and inventory planning tools to generate and maintain 12-month rolling demand forecast and purchasing plan with target seasonal stock levels and payment timing
• Join forces with the Financial Advisory team to implement an effective pricing model across country programs
• Generate guidelines for clients to manage order and forecast process as well as how to handle excess inventory and stock outs
• Develop sophisticated data analyses to drive order forecasting and pricing decisions, improve supply chain efficiency, and drive operational scalability
• Extract and analyze system data using SAP Business One, Power BI, and excel to identify and recommend improvements to supply chain metrics and performance standards
• Use data analytics to drive on-time deliveries and deliver world class customer service to our clients
• Set the standard for high quality inventory data management across the organization
• Develop organizational Key Performance Indicators and targets for data management, forecasting, and order timeliness
• Aggregate and report on supply chain KPIs quarterly to organizational leadership
• Use reporting tools to drive behavior change within supply chain and across the organization with monthly purchasing, inventory movement, and forecast accuracy reports
• Mentor supply chain staff to build leadership and project management skills
• Set ambitious goals for your direct reports and support their achievements
• Identifying strong talent pools for recruiting high quality supply chain staff
• Become familiar with One Acre Fund teams and structures to ensure your team is effectively supporting their internal clients including Finance and Logistics
• Build outstanding communication channels to deliver overall process transparency to your internal clients

Career Growth and Development

One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager will invest significant time in your career development. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and through regular management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about.  Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions. This results in fast career growth for our staff.

Qualifications

We are seeking exceptional professionals with experience in and a passion for procurement and supply chain. Experience in an entrepreneurial environment is a plus.

Candidates that meet the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Work experience in a demanding professional environment, preferably in positions where frequent cross-department communication was required
• Experience in procurement, logistics, or supply chain management preferred
• Knowledge of SAP or other ERP reporting skills strongly preferred
• Proficiency in Excel and other software packages required
• Creativity and strong problem solving skills. You don’t take no for an answer and constantly look for alternative solutions to problems
• A passion for world class customer service
• Strong quantitative reasoning and critical thinking skills
• Outstanding communication skills with direct reports, peers and management
• Experience working internationally preferred
• Leadership experience at work or outside of work
• Ability to work and make decisions independently
• Good oral and written communication skills
• Top-performing academic background
• Language: English required, French and Swahili preferred

Preferred Start Date

ASAP

Compensation

We offer a modest starting salary that affords a high quality of life in our areas of operation. This is a career-track role with performance-based raises and the ability to expand responsibilities over time.

Benefits

Health insurance, immunizations, flight, housing.

Sponsor International Candidates 

No

East Africans are strongly encouraged to apply.

go to method of application »

Duration

Minimum 2-year commitment, full-time job 

Job Description

In 2020, One Acre Fund's services will serve over 1 million smallholder farmers directly and expects to reach an additional 2 million farmers through systems change work across Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Our team is expected to double in size, reaching 10,000 staff members strong and we will collectively be generating $350m dollars worth of impact for our customers. At the front lines, our program teams will be taking the lead to deliver this impact. But in the background, there is another important player: data. Harnessed to its full potential, data helps us understand who our customers are at a deeper level, how we can serve them more efficiently, and how to generate even more impact through our products and services.

Today, One Acre Fund already strives to make strategic decisions based on evidence and data. But as we look to the future, we want to bring our organization’s use of data to the next level. We are thus looking for a highly motivated data engineer to play a critical role in our central data management team. The central data management team oversees data structure and quality across core organizational operations to bring together useful business metrics for decision makers.

The Impact Data Engineer will ultimately be primarily responsible for one portion of our organizational data - Impact. The Impact Data Engineer will be responsible for harmonizing One Acre Fund’s Impact data ecosystem and ensuring that our Impact Division’s data infrastructure improves – rather than limits – our strategic decision-making. Specific responsibilities include:

• Structuring One Acre Fund impact data for enhanced uses: Our M&E and R&D departments currently collect and manage large quantities of valuable farmer data. The Impact Data Engineer will act as the unifying force across teams and countries to harmonize current impact-related data sets to enable more efficient meta analyses and strategic decision making.
• Building efficient data management tools: In addition to structuring existing data, the Impact Data Engineer will work with field data collection teams to ensure that new data collected integrates with the central system seamlessly. The Data Engineer will influence the entire data collection chain from the farmer to the decision making process.
• Expanding and maintaining R API to Impact data system: One Acre Fund uses a system called CommCare to build and deploy surveys with field enumerator teams. We have a working API to simplify accessing data from the CommCare system for analysis. The Impact Data Engineer will be responsible for expanding the capacity and usability of the API and chart a course for integrating its use into One Acre Fund analytics.
• Identify and advise on opportunities for data systems improvement: At One Acre Fund, we believe in continual growth for the organization as well as individuals. Our data systems are no exception. The Impact Data Engineer will spend time understanding data systems pain points across the organization, prioritize potential improvement projects, and then work with the relevant stakeholders to build a solution. These projects could range from identifying a more efficient way to data-enter paper contracts to working with our soil lab to digitize their sample tracking process in a way that can ultimately integrate into our broader data ecosystem.
• Providing technical support as needed: We have a growing roster of software developers and data analysts who sit in different teams across One Acre Fund. The Impact Data Engineer will join this group, facilitating knowledge exchange across teams.

Career Growth and Development

One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager and a global support team will commit significant time in your career development. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and through regular management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about. Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions.

Qualifications

We are looking for a truly extraordinary professional who will play a critical role in reaching our scale, impact, and efficiency goals. This is a competitive posting for a career–track role. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Optimizing for impact: We know that people with the data engineering skill set are highly sought after and could easily find a job in the corporate world with a large salary. Our compensation package affords a comfortable quality of life but is modest in comparison.
• Strong work experiences: Previous experience as a Data Engineer, building pipelines across different data platforms with the users in mind. We are looking for someone who sees data, people, and business insights as inextricably linked and enjoys working with different teams to understand their needs as much as devising data infrastructure solutions (both software and hardware).
• Technical skills:
• Previous experience with SQL, SSAS, or SSIS platforms for data warehousing solutions.
• Proficient in T-SQL or similar program. 
• Experience with MDX is a plus.
• Familiarity with R.
• Experience designing tables and picking datatypes.
• Experience with Performance Tuning and Optimization (PTO), using native SQL Server monitoring and troubleshooting tools.
• Prefer Candidates with Bachelors in Computer Science, Engineering, MIS, or related discipline.
• Professional skills:
• Very strong self-manager. We want someone who is organized and comfortable independently leading projects while working closely with other teams.
• Able to see the forest and the trees. We are looking for someone who can keep the big picture in mind, and is also willing and able to roll up her/his sleeves and dig in and find solutions.
• Outstanding responsiveness to feedback: We firmly believe that ability to act on both reinforcing and redirecting feedback is the fastest way to grow. Individuals with a growth mindset will thrive in our team culture.
• A willingness to commit to at least two years: This is a long-term, career–track role. The ideal candidate will have had experience working in an emerging market, although this is not required.
• Language: English required; working proficiency in Swahili and/or French is a bonus.

Preferred Start Date

ASAP

Compensation

Starts modest. However, this is a career-track role with fast raises for performance, paying a meaningful salary for long-term placement in developing nations.

Benefits

Health insurance, immunizations, flights, housing.

Sponsor International Candidates

No.

East Africans strongly encouraged to apply.

go to method of application »

Duration

Minimum 2 years commitment for full-time career role

Job Description

One Acre Fund has tested many different insurance products and services since our inception, always with the goals of providing a meaningful safety net for smallholder households and ensuring our ability to continue serving farmers in the event of catastrophe. We offer micro-insurance to most clients, with products ranging from crop (or input) insurance to funeral insurance to health insurance. At a high level, insurance is key to minimizing organizational risk inherent in microfinance and in agriculture. The role of the Insurance Associate/Manager is to coordinate all of our insurance work, assess and improve our insurance offerings, and support relationships with insurance providers. Specifically, this person’s responsibilities will include:

• Design and manage One Acre Fund’s “crop-insurance” portfolio in order to provide a reliable safety net for farmers in the event that climatic conditions lead to major yield losses, and do so in a way that is in line with One Acre Fund’s goals of driving towards financial sustainability. (~70% of role)
  • Research & Analysis.
    • Conduct a review of all historical and current policies, proposals, and analyses for One Acre Fund. Scope historical and current insurance policies in tropical agriculture and identify successful examples that could apply to One Acre Fund’s context.  
    • Create and maintain a centralized resource for all insurance information.
  • Product Design
    • Collaborate with field teams to research and understand farmers’ perceptions of climate-related risk, levels of resilience, and basic needs corresponding to various levels of shock.
    • Determine the optimal insurance parameters for each country of operation, and design and test micro index-insurance or loan-forgiveness models using historical weather and yield data for each program. Products must be adoptable by smallholder farmers and impactful in the protection they provide.
  • Expertise & Advising
    • Act as an effective advisor during internal insurance conversations and as a knowledgeable representative with third-party insurance providers and external partners.
    • Support program operations in the development of policies, procedures, and training materials for insurance implementation.
    • Serve as One Acre Fund’s link to developments in crop insurance strategy and theory.  Stay up to date with programs around the world and apply best practices to One Acre Fund’s strategy.
  • Support One Acre Fund leadership to understand the full landscape of insurance products that are relevant to the organization. (~30% of role)
    • Assess options for field-facing products and services like funeral/death insurance and health insurance. Help individual programs decide which policies may be best for their clients, negotiate terms with insurance providers, and support field teams with operationalizing these products.
    • Evaluate risks related to, and insurance against, global organizational risks like assets, currency, repayment, etc.

Career Growth and Development

One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager and a global support team will commit significant time in your career development. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and through regular management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about.  Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions.

Qualifications

We are seeking an exceptional professional with 3+ years of work experience, a demonstrated passion for international development, and a strong knowledge of actuarial principles. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Strong background in a quantitative field such as finance, econometrics, engineering, or environmental science, including 2-5+ years experience or equivalent advanced degree.
• Experience with actuarial modeling, preferably with index-insurance or micro-insurance product development.
• Fluency with crop insurance trends and innovations.
• Understanding of agricultural risks (e.g. expertise in plant physiology) and/or experience in tropical agriculture is desirable.
• Collaborative nature and excellent communication skills. This position will require liaising with a wide range of internal for passionate professionals who combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service to join our growing family of leaders.
• A willingness to commit to living in East Africa for at least two years – this is a long-term, career-track role. The ideal candidate will have at least one year demonstrated experience working in the developing world, although this is not a strict requirement.
• Language: Fluency in English required.

Preferred Start Date

Early 2017

Compensation

We offer a modest starting salary that affords a high quality of life in our areas of operation. This is a career-track role with performance-based raises and the ability to expand responsibilities over time. 

Benefits

Health insurance, immunizations, flight, housing.

Sponsor International Candidates 

Yes

East Africans Encouraged to Apply.