Jobs at African Entrepreneur Collective (AEC)

About the Opportunity

As Inkomoko has ambitious growth plans, and improving our ability to leverage digital technology  will lead to improved efficiency and rapid scale.  The IT Director will proactively plan the IT/digital  growth strategy for the company’s expansion across multiple geographies and product lines.  Specifically, the IT Director will be responsible for:

Responsibilities

• IT Strategy - Optimizes IT processes, products, systems, and approaches. Implements changes as necessary to ensure continued alignment with the organization’s changing business needs, tech developments in the marketplace (data analytics, machine learning, AI, etc.), and the needs of our clients in remote/disconnected locations.
• IT Policy Development and Monitoring - Ensure company policies are compliant with data and tech laws in our countries of operation, manage internal practices to keep company assets, data, and colleagues safe. 
• IT Team/Staff Management - Structure, hire, supervise, and manage performance of IT staff, consultants, and vendors across all locations of operation.  Ensure they are continually upskilled and growing to meet company needs.
• Cross-department tech integration and coordination - ensuring that systems and processes are coordinated for the benefit of all across the company, and be the lead partner to other Directors in identifying opportunities for improvement (i.e. Loan Management System connects with the Accounting system, which connects to Payroll and HR systems, etc). 
• IT Financial management - Develop and monitor the annual IT budget, forecasts future IT financial needs, and fundraise with the Director on securing resources, while making director-level decisions on procurement. 
• User-focused results - Ensure all IT work meets the needs of diverse internal and external clients/users, and supervises team for UI/UX excellence and QA. 

Minimum Qualifications

In a director role, successful candidates for this position will have both technical expertise and demonstrate previous leadership experience.  The IT DIRECTOR should be innovative and stay informed of industry trends, and she must be able to communicate technical concepts in a manner understood by all stakeholders.   

• Minimum of 5 years of experience of IT leadership in East Africa (previous IT Director, CTO, etc.)
• Previous experience leading teams/development with in SCRUM and sprint style product development
• Previous experience with fintech, ERP, core banking, and cloud-based/API solutions, with experience in our relevant coding languages (our stack: Python, XML, Javascript, Postgresql)
• Ability to demonstrate an Innovation mindset, focused on leap-frog approaches to tech progress, and a deep commitment to delivering value to the end-user. 

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About the Opportunity

This is a new position for Inkomoko, with great opportunity to leverage innovation to improve how we do business and bring locally-relevant solutions to help our clients start, optimize, and grow their micro/small businesses. As a member of the Innovation Lab team, the successful candidate will be expected to collaborate closely with the Regional Director of Innovation and different business units across the organization to turn insights and ideas into potential solutions. 

Responsibilities

Key responsibilities include:

• Product/service development: Co-design with Inkomoko teams, including IT team (and vendors when appropriate) small-scale experiments for revising our programs or services, testing prototypes internally or with clients, and evaluating the impact. 
• Own Innovation Development Processes: Develop and implement intuitive processes and systems to generate, organize and fully implement continual improvements that add value to Inkomoko’s business strategy.  This includes both client entrepreneur-facing improvements and internal improvements for colleagues across East Africa.
• Innovation Program management: Manage day-to-day innovation portfolio, overseeing the planning, tracking progress, and communicating results of Inkomoko’s innovation projects and programs.
• Goal setting: Develop innovation targets and KPIs to track and measure the effectiveness of Inkomoko’s innovation practices , ensuring the results are practical, tangible and meaningful to generate efficiency and social impact. 
• Create a Culture of Innovation: Engage across the company to help Inkomoko to socialize innovation practices through informal (office hour, guest speaker, etc.) and formal learnings (hackathon, workshop, etc.).  Engage colleagues in a range of skill levels, languages, lived experiences, and exposure levels to generating improvements.

Minimum Qualifications

• A creative problem solver with strong user (UI/UX) experience
• At least 5 years of innovation management experience, including hands-on experience molding ideas into real life solutions
• A highly empathetic community builder and/or HCDer who has experience working with marginalized communities in East Africa (e.g. refugees, women, youth) to implement and scale practical solutions.
• A highly effective communicator who can engage data and storytelling to build consensus across cross-functional team environments and from different cultures.
• A thoughtful person – brave enough to try doing things differently and adaptive enough to manage roadblocks.
• Willingness to fail - not all ideas will work.  This position will need to be willing to pivot, iterate, and let go when needed.  Be committed to solving the problem, not wedded to the solution.