Jobs at FinAgra

About the Role

• FinAgra is looking for an experienced Lead Agronomist to take ownership of agronomic performance across our farming operations in Kenya.
• We are looking for someone who has previously worked as a Chief Agronomist, Head Agronomist, or in a similar senior role on a commercial farm, with strong hands-on experience in open-field crops.
• This is not an advisory role. We need someone who has been directly responsible for crops in the field — making decisions throughout the season, leading agronomy and farm teams, solving problems as they arise, and being accountable for yield and crop quality.
• You will also have an opportunity to shape the technology FinAgra is building to manage farming operations at scale, working directly with our Product and Technology teams.

What You Will Do

• Own agronomic performance across FinAgra farms in Kenya, from land selection, preparation and planting through harvest.
• Develop and continuously improve land selection parameters, crop protocols, growing calendars, and agronomic standards adapted to Kenyan conditions.
• Spend significant time in the field, monitoring crop development, identifying risks, and making timely agronomic decisions.
• Ensure consistent implementation of best practices across different farms and locations.
• Lead, coach, and develop agronomists, REPs, farm managers, and field teams.
• Use soil tests, weather, crop observations, yield data, and season results to continuously improve farming practices.
• Work closely with Operations and Procurement and Sales to ensure agronomic plans are practical, timely, and commercially sound.
• Work directly with FinAgra's Product and Technology teams to translate agronomic expertise into digital workflows, planning tools, decision-support systems, and AI-enabled farm management products. You will be one of the key users and domain experts shaping how our technology works in the field.

What We Are Looking For

• 7+ years of hands-on agronomy experience in commercial farming.
• Previous experience as a Chief Agronomist, Head Agronomist, Senior Farm Agronomist, Production Agronomist, or equivalent.
• Strong experience with open-field crop production and responsibility for crops across the full growing cycle.
• Experience leading agronomists, farm managers, or field teams.
• Strong practical knowledge of soil fertility, crop nutrition, pest and disease management, crop protection, and field operations.
• A track record of being accountable for crop performance and yield, rather than only providing agronomic advice.
• Experience with several of our key crops — maize, potatoes, barley, beans, and canola.
• Experience managing production across multiple farms or locations is a strong advantage.
• Comfortable using data and digital tools and excited about helping build new technology for agriculture.

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Role purpose

• FinAgra's REP (Rural Entrepreneurial Partner — agribusiness people partnering, or wishing to partner, with FinAgra) onboarding journey happens on the candidate's phone, mostly over WhatsApp — but a real person is always behind the scenes. The REP Onboarding & Field Coordination Operator is that person.
• Operators work from Slack, where their messages reach candidates on WhatsApp, and guide each candidate through onboarding — from the first welcome to the handover to the Head of REP Program for the closing call and first-season plan. Candidates are often rural farmers who may be new to digital forms, so clear, patient, plain-language communication (in both English and Swahili) is essential.
• The role also holds the office end of field operations. Several teams work different regions at once, and every visit needs a schedule, a vehicle, working connectivity, and somewhere for the results to land. The Operator plans that week, keeps the teams moving, and makes sure nothing gathered in the field is lost on the way back.

Why this role exists

• Keep every REP candidate moving smoothly through the eight-step onboarding journey, with low drop-off between steps.
• Put a warm, human, responsive presence behind a phone-based, WhatsApp-first process — especially for candidates new to digital forms.
• Give the field teams one point of contact for schedules, transport and logistics, so senior staff are not coordinating their own travel.
• Make sure every field visit produces a record — candidate details, land measurements, KYC documents — that reaches the right system the same day.
• Protect candidate data and ensure clean, well-documented handovers to the Head of REP Program.

Key responsibilities

Candidate onboarding (Slack → WhatsApp)

• Run WhatsApp conversations with assigned REP candidates from the Slack operator console.
• Send the right message at each step: welcome and journey overview, questionnaire link, secure continuation link, identity-check (KYC) prompt, approval message, and call-booking link.
• Answer questions simply and set expectations — “no rush,” “your answers save automatically,” “there are no wrong answers.”
• Follow up gently with candidates who go quiet or leave a form incomplete.
• Track each candidate's stage across the eight-step journey and keep clear notes for a smooth handover.
• Keep candidate data safe.
• Escalate anything that needs a specialist (agronomy, technical, or eligibility) to the right team.
• Hand approved candidates to the Head of REP Program for the call, training, and first-season plan.

Field team coordination

• Build and circulate the coming week’s field visit schedule, grouping visits by area so teams cover the most ground with the least travel.
• Confirm each team’s composition and route before deployment, and hold a short daily check-in call with every team in the field.
• Book and allocate vehicles against the schedule, and plan in-field handovers so team leads are not returning to Nairobi between visits.
• Check connectivity and equipment before teams leave — devices charged, data loaded, and a tested fallback if the primary connection fails.
• Track the outcome of every planned visit: completed, rescheduled, or not reached, with the reason recorded.
• Flag anything that will stop a visit happening — a vehicle, a document, an unconfirmed appointment — early enough to be fixed.

Planning, data and records

• Act as the office point of contact for everything coming in from the field: candidate details, land measurements, GPS coordinates and KYC documents. File them in the shared system the same day they arrive.
• Maintain the master candidate and lead list, and reconcile applications arriving through Slack notifications against the database so the two never diverge.
• Work a missing-information checklist, chasing candidates and field teams for whatever is outstanding.
• Keep a clean record of engagement outcomes — accepted, declined with the reason, or pending — so the funnel can be read at a glance.
• Prepare the weekly field summary for the Friday Ops call: visits made, candidates progressed, and what is blocked.

What “great” looks like

• Candidates keep moving and always know what happens next; drop-off between steps is low.
• Replies are fast, warm, and easy to understand.
• Field teams start each week knowing where they are going, with whom, and in what vehicle — no one waits on a schedule.
• Nothing collected in the field sits uncaptured overnight.
• The lead list is trusted, because it matches what actually happened.
• Candidate data is always handled safely.
• Notes are clear enough for any operator or officer to step in seamlessly.

Required skills & experience

• Experience: A background in communication, customer support, community mobilisation, sales/onboarding, scheduling or operations coordination, or a similar people-facing role is an advantage. Suited to someone who enjoys guiding and reassuring people rather than pushing them, and who takes satisfaction in a week that runs to plan.
• Technical skills: Comfortable with Slack, WhatsApp, and digital forms; able to guide candidates who are not digital-natives through an online journey step by step; confident building and maintaining a schedule across several teams at once; competent with spreadsheets and trackers; careful and reliable with candidate data and privacy; organised note-taker who can hold many candidates and several field teams in view simultaneously.
• Personal attributes: Patient, warm, and genuinely helpful; a clear, plain-language communicator; fluent in both English and Swahili; responsive and dependable in follow-up; discreet and trustworthy with personal data; calm when a plan changes mid-week; comfortable chasing senior colleagues politely and persistently; a team player who knows when to escalate.

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Role purpose

• FinAgra delivers mechanised field operations — land preparation, planting, crop protection, spreading and harvesting — through contracted service providers on REP and leased land. Operation quality directly drives crop establishment, yield and cost.
• The Mechanisation Specialist is the technical owner of machinery standards. The role ensures every contracted machine meets the specification in the SOP and service contract for each activity, assesses and certifies completed work, builds the vetted per-cluster service-provider list with Field Officers, and trains Field Officers to enforce the SOPs and checklists. It sits at the intersection of agronomy, operations and procurement.

Key responsibilities

Machinery specification & standards

• Own and maintain the required machinery specifications for each activity (below among others), aligned to the SOPs and contracts; translate agronomic requirements into verifiable equipment/operating specs for RFQs and SLAs.

Equipment inspection & verification (pre-work)

• Inspect contracted tractors/implements against the Equipment Inspection Checklist before mobilisation; certify or reject; share requirements with providers in advance to avoid wasted mobilisation cost.
• Verify equipment meets spec in field conditions (working depth, calibration) before work starts; technically assess and approve any scope/spec change before it is issued.

Work assessment & Work Completion Certificate (post-work)

• Assess completed work against the contracted spec and quality standards (depth, coverage, uniformity, ridge geometry, calibration, acreage, finish).
• Issue / sign off the Work Completion Certificate (WCC) only for compliant work — the trigger for balance payment; withhold it and require zero-cost rework for substandard work.
• Provide the technical basis for KPI reviews at each WCC; enforce mobilisation (48 hr) and breakdown-backup (24 hr) terms; investigate incidents and drive preventive action.
• Service-provider mapping & qualification (with Field Officers & Procurement)
• Work hand in hand with Field Officers to build a per-cluster list of service providers — their equipment and the activities they offer.
• Assess each provider's machinery against the required specs; compile the assessed, cluster-by-cluster qualified list and share it with Procurement for the internal procurement process; keep it current.

Training, procurement support & documentation

• Train Field Officers to inspect machinery, assess work and enforce SOP/checklist adherence; coach providers to lift network quality.
• Give the Procurement Manager the technical specs for RFQs/SLAs, the assessed provider lists, and technical evaluations; advise on machinery selection, capacity and seasonal needs.
• Maintain equipment, provider-assessment, inspection and WCC records in the ERP and farm management system; report machinery performance and risk to leadership (Excel, Slack).

What “great” looks like

• Unsuitable machines are caught before mobilisation; WCCs are issued only for compliant work, so payment follows verified quality.
• Each cluster has an assessed, ready pool of qualified providers handed to Procurement; each activity has a clear standard consistently met.
• Field Officers inspect machinery and assess work confidently without the specialist on every site; disputes, rework and downtime fall.

Required skills & experience

Education & experience:

• Degree/Diploma in Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural Mechanization, Farm Power & Machinery, Mechanical Engineering (agricultural application) or related.
• Experience with farm-machinery operations, specifications, calibration and maintenance (commercial/contracted mechanization ideal), across tillage, seeding/planting, spraying and spreading.
• Familiarity with Kenyan service providers and field conditions is an advantage.

Technical skills:

• Strong command of machine operations and the optimal standard per activity (depth, speed, rate/spacing, calibration, ridge geometry, finish); able to assess both machinery specs and completed-work quality against the standard.
• Equipment inspection, calibration and basic troubleshooting.
• Tech-savvy with a farm management system, ERP (equipment master, inspection, WCC), Excel, Slack and digital checklists; drone/precision-ag and GPS/RTK an advantage.
• Able to write SOPs, checklists and training materials; aware of chemical safe-use and KCAA drone compliance.

Personal attributes:

• Trainer/mentor who builds Field-Officer and provider capability;
• Firm on standards with integrity — assesses work objectively and resists pressure to certify substandard work; field-ready (most time on farms; driving an advantage)
• Fluent in English and Kiswahili with clear records and training; organised and self-directed across multiple clusters.