Job Opportunities at Arifu - 3 Positions

Job Description

This is a full-time position with equity participation based at Arifu’s headquarters off Kindaruma Road, Nairobi.

Send your CV with “Director of Business Development” in the subject and tell us what excites you about this role. If we see a good fit, we’ll get back to you to set up a first conversation.

Job Responsibilities

• Generating and refining sector growth strategies across key verticals including financial services, agriculture, health, consumer goods, energy, telecommunications, and humanitarian / development;
• Building, managing, and training a salesforce to acquire new clients and design high-impact service contracts that impact millions of lives while generating the financial resources necessary to scale operations;
• Collaborating closely with leadership to develop a market expansion strategy taking Arifu into new countries within East Africa and then across key countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America;
• Managing the sales pipeline and related communications to move partners from lead generation through to deal closing;
• Participating in industry events to expand the company’s network, influence, and brand awareness;
• Overseeing and contributing to the production of client proposals, grant applications, and investor briefs;
• Leading market research efforts to inform and prioritize new product feature development, competitive positioning, new partnerships, upselling opportunities, and team needs;
• Producing financial models that deepen our understanding of the evolving unit economics of our business and optimize pricing across existing and new product lines such as advanced data products and content licensing;
• Identifying new B2B and B2C revenue streams and assess their relative potential to drive growth;
• Advancing internal process automation that reduces CAC while producing stronger analytics for measuring business development team performance;
• Developing and maintaining healthy long term relationships with clients, donors, strategic partners, and investors;

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional experience with at least 3 years in institutional / B2B sales;
• Demonstrated experience managing a team to achieve sales targets or client deliverables;
• MBA or domain-relevant master’s degree;
• Ability to live and work in Nairobi, Kenya;
• Strong analytical skills and ability to generate actionable recommendations from research and analysis;
• Strong financial modelling, analysis, and forecasting skills;
• Deep domain expertise in at least one of the following sectors: financial services, agriculture, consumer goods, telecommunications, health, energy, humanitarian;
• Ability to establish relationships and close deals with multinational executives;
• Persuasive verbal and written communication skills. Fluency in English required;
• Grit and resourcefulness in the pursuit of solutions to the problems that stand in your way;
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, resource-constrained, early stage work environment.

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Job Description

As part of the core leadership, the CTO will work closely with the COO, CLO, and CEO. You will manage and work closely with software engineers, product managers, data scientists, and learning designers to drive our pioneering technical innovation agenda by applying machine learning, predictive analytics, behavioral science, and conversational agents to deliver personalized information and opportunity at scale

Job Responsibilities

• Develop a clear vision, objectives, and implementation strategy for the technology product of Arifu;
• Attract, structure, lead, and inspire a high performing and ever-growing team of engineers, product managers, data scientists, algorithm developers, statisticians, system admins, dreamers, and designers;
• Identify competitive advantages and technological trends for the benefit of Arifu;
• Oversee the design, development, and deployment of a highly profitable and impactful learning platform in key expansion markets initially across Africa and then to Asia and Latin America;
• Guide near term builds including the Arifu Android/iOS app, IVR app, advertising and licensing exchange, adaptive learning engine, predictive analytics, and partner API;
• Provide perspective and guidance on long-term scalable architecture, strategy, investments and innovation drawing upon your depth and breadth of knowledge;
• Publish technical white papers on the impact of our innovations and generate patent applications as appropriate;
• Contribute thought leadership with industry executives at the organizations that Arifu works with across financial services, agriculture, consumer goods, energy, health, telecommunications and other sectors;
• Facilitate workshops, hackathons and seminars to position Arifu as an edtech industry leader and attract top level talent;
• Lead an ambitious research agenda to put Arifu at the forefront of the application of artificial intelligence, mobile technology, remote sensing, and behavioral science;
• Participate in community events, trade meetups, and industry workshops in Nairobi and globally.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field with a concentration in artificial intelligence, adaptive learning, neural networks, cognitive computing, predictive analytics and related focus areas;
• 10+ years of relevant professional experience with at least 5 years in a leadership capacity;
• Highly technical and analytical, with 10+ years of experience in building innovative software products;
• Has an intimate understanding of the power of information and is passionate about using artificial intelligence, mobile technology, and behavioral science among others in revolutionizing how people access information and digital services;
• Track record of end-to-end mobile product development and deployment resulting in strong engagement KPIs;
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically about business, product, and technical challenges;
• Demonstrated ability to attract, structure, lead, and inspire a high performing and dynamic technology department;
• Working technical knowledge in all areas relevant to the Arifu product: MVC, PHP, Java, MySQL, Android, Python, R, AWS, Bitbucket, CSS, SMS, IVR, HTML5, and Laravel;
• Experience with server and database frameworks and tools such as Ubuntu, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB;
• Ability to communicate complex topics to an audience with various functional knowledge
• Adept with East African cultural norms and their implications for technology design and business strategy decisions;
• Must be willing to be based in Nairobi and travel.

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Job Responsibilities

• Managing a comprehensive end-to-end quality assurance (QA) process, including advancing robust guidelines
• and procedures as well as tools and relevant documentation;
• Acting as primary interface with partners and project managers with regards to QA-related issues to ensure timeliness of live launches;
• Managing all aspects of the loading process and supporting the tech team on automation of future loading;
• Liaising with the data, tech and content team to help prioritize features and mitigate recurrence of known bugs during product lifecycle;
• Establishing a strategy for both automation and manual testing and work with the content team to execute it;
• Ensuring that application features meet partners and learners requirements as specified by partnership contracts;
• Develop and manage internal control systems to determine if QA processes and systems are producing useful, accurate and reliable data in accordance with policies and procedures and proactively assessing and addressing any potential risks with the CLO and Director of Operations;
• Overseeing any outsourcing of quality assurance tasks, including user and product testing;
• Managing user and product testing including recruitment, selection, and performance of product testers across project countries.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in quality assurance;
• 4+ years of experience in test planning and execution;
• A degree in Engineering, Business, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field;
• Working knowledge of Defect Management process, Risk Framework and Mitigation, and Enterprise Testing standards;
• Expertise with QA Deliverables tool set;
• Experience with test automation tools;
• Experience with Continuous Integration models;
• Experience with Agile tools (Jira/Rally);
• Experience with Onsite/Offsite model;
• Strong background in both Agile/Waterfall Methodologies;
• Strong competency in requirements analysis, prioritizing tasks, and identifying risks;
• Strong SQL scripting skills, Web applications and mobile testing experience;
• Organized and able to multitask in a fast-paced environment;
• Highly motivated and able to work independently;
• Strong problem solving and analytical skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills, Communicates Effectively, builds relationships, Influences others
• Willingness to learn and adapt to changes;
• Fluency in English and Swahili required;
• Ability to handle the chaos of a fast-paced startup work culture and a willingness to take on additional tasks and support the work of other team members as necessary to achieve collective goals.