Job Openings at One Acre Fund - 3 Positions

Job Description

Responsibilities of the Purchasing Lead will include:

• Team Management & Leadership Development
  • Mentoring strong procurement directors in each country to build leadership and team management skills
  • Coaching local purchasing teams to identify high quality, high-level suppliers and how to negotiate for best pricing and terms
  • Working with multi-national staff and suppliers
  • Identifying strong local talent pools for recruiting high-quality procurement staff
• Defined Business Processes
  • Setting up procurement mechanisms and systems by incorporating best practices from other organizations and identifying strong, long-term supplier relationships.
  • Mapping out current procurement practices to identify and implement cost- and time-saving improvements
  • Implementing standardized practices across all country procurement teams to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and customer service
• Define Measurable Quality Metrics
  • Ensuring consistent, predictable quality by building strong Quality Assurance processes
  • Preventing fraud and corruption challenges along the procurement value chain
  • Coordinating across teams to evaluate Quality Assurance measures and implement best practices
• Building Outstanding Communication Channels
  • Becoming familiar with One Acre Fund teams and structures to ensure the local procurement team is best supporting their internal clients
  • Working closely with logistics teams to minimize delivered costs
  • Working closely with other internal teams to reduce overall spend
  • Improving overall procurement process transparency

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 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
• Some experience in a field requiring regular quantitative reasoning skills & data analytics skills (such as engineering, consulting, finance, or supply chain management) preferred but not 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
• Outstanding communication skills with suppliers, 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
• Language: English required, French and Swahili preferred

Preferred Start Date

ASAP

Job Location

Kakamega, Kenya

Duration

Minimum 2 years commitment, full-time job

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

Job Description

We are looking for driven, strategic problem-solvers dedicated to social impact to join One Acre Fund’s Internal Consulting Team (ICT). ICT is responsible for sharpening the organization’s strategy and for supporting other One Acre Fund teams at key junctures where additional analytical resources could have an outsized impact for the organization. Above all we are seeking skilled professionals capable of delivering high-quality work in a flexible and independent manner, supporting teams across the organization on a wide range of project types.

A sample of recent Internal Consulting Team work includes:

• Shaping One Acre Fund’s expansion strategy - To help One Acre Fund hit its ambitious farmer growth targets, two analysts were challenged to develop a rigorous and scalable approach to program expansion that could be rolled out across all countries. This new approach involved quantitative and qualitative analysis, field survey design and analysis, financial modeling, as well as a political and security risk assessment. The work was adopted by in-country Field Operations teams and is bringing OAF closer to achieving its 2020 target of reaching one million farmers.
• Conducting a Kenya program health check-up - A manager recently conducted a “health check-up” of our Kenya program in order to proactively identify and resolve risks to that program's ambitious goals, independently examining a number of programmatic areas including management quality, hiring standards, and team culture and morale. The final prioritized list of synthesized takeaways and actionable recommendations will give the Kenya leadership team additional visibility into program pain points, and will ultimately improve the program’s overall efficiency, while having a positive influence on staff experience.
• Building a customer protection dashboard - To better understand how well we are doing protecting our clients, team members collaborated to develop a customer protection dashboard. They used an online software to summarize results in real-time from numerous customer protection surveys that captured data at a national, district and site level. The dashboard has enabled our in-country Field teams to more easily roll-out targeted interventions to improve our customer protection practices and ensure we truly are putting farmers first.
• Coordinating the Country Directors Working Group - Our Country Directors meet periodically in a working group that generates coherent guidance for country programs and shares cross-country knowledge. An ICT manager sets the working group’s agenda, structures topic discussions and decisions, and helps to connect the group to org-wide goals.
• Championing organizational wide Objective Key Results (OKRs) - Every year, One Acre Fund uses a strategy-setting methodology known as Objective Key Results (OKRs) to help set annual goals at the organizational and team level. ICT managers played a central role in the initial adoption and subsequent rollout of OKRs across the organisation. Over the past two years, a manager has worked with other members of ICT to coordinate OKR-setting across the organization, culminating in an organization-wide Town Hall where org-wide OKRs are shared and annual targets are set against them.  

We are hiring for two different levels:

Analysts take full ownership of projects, from planning through execution and follow-up. They manage anywhere from 2-5 projects at any given time, are typically responsible for at least one other team-specific initiative, and are expected to be able to tackle any type of project – from quantitative modeling to primary research – with a relentless focus on solving the problem at hand. Experienced Analysts are sometimes also asked to take on direct management responsibilities for one of our Strategy & Research Specialists and help grow them into exceptional Analysts.

Managers do the same type of critical work as Analysts, plus meaningfully invest in building staff capacity—both within our team and across the organization. Managers are often responsible for launching key initiatives across multiple countries, managing the roll out of high-priority programs in several departments, and maintaining close working relationships with some of our senior leaders.

Career Growth and Development

A core value at One Acre Fund is continual growth. Your supervisor will invest significant time in your career development. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through daily discussions as needed, weekly mentorship sessions, and quarterly management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one coffee chats where we discuss career goals and work collaboratively to craft career paths that each person can be passionate about. Because of One Acre Fund’s rapid growth, we often have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions, resulting in fast career growth for our high-performing staff.

Qualifications

We are looking for extraordinary professionals who will help take One Acre Fund to the next levels of impact and scale. **This is a competitive posting for a career–track role. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Strong work experiences: We are looking for candidates with a proven track record of solving complex, ambiguous problems in a structured way (e.g., management consultants, research managers, business analysts). Ideally 2-3 years of experience for analysts, 3-5 years of experience for managers.
• Ultimately, we are looking for the ability to take a complex question, identify the most efficient route to a useful solution, and structure the work into manageable milestones
• We also look for leadership experiences, in or outside of work, particularly in roles that demonstrate relationship management and driving results
• Bonus for previous work experience directly serving executive-level leadership
• Professional/technical skills
• Analysts are expected to have advanced proficiency in bothExcel and PowerPoint. Experience with other professional programs (e.g. R, STATA, Access) is a plus
• Managers should have demonstrated experience in project management, capacity building, and professional development of others
• Outstanding responsiveness to feedback: we firmly believe that ability to act on both reinforcing and redirecting feedback is the fastest way to grow. As a team, we give and expect to receive open and frank feedback, both to our reports and to our managers. Candidates should exhibit an ability to take feedback as a chance to improve, and know how to give feedback in a constructive manner.
• Humility: in everything One Acre Fund does, we put farmers first. We do this by approaching our work and individual growth with humility, efficiency, and compassion.
• Language: English fluency required; proficiency in any languages spoken in East Africa is a bonus

Preferred Start Date

Flexible

Job Location

East Africa capital city, with preference for Nairobi, Kenya. However, strong candidates could be based in Kigali, Kampala, etc. after an initial 3-6 month period in Nairobi.

Duration

Full-time, open-ended contract with a minimum of 2 years commitment.

Compensation

Starts modest, though enough to have a comfortable quality of life. This is a career-track role with fast raises for performance, paying a meaningful salary for long-term placement.

Benefits

Health insurance, immunizations, flight, room and board.

Sponsor International Candidates

No

East African applicants strongly encouraged to apply.

Job Description

The People Division Director’s responsibilities would include, but not be limited to:

Strategy & Vision

• Together with country leadership, set and steer the course for the 5 – 15-year vision.
• Run annual goal setting and planning processes for all people-departments. Ensure annual plans align with the long-term vision and targets.
• Measure progress against goals, regularly report on progress, and hold the team accountable for prioritizing and delivering results in key strategic areas.
• Help our people departments scale service provision to more staff while maintaining the same departmental headcounts, improving the division’s impact to serve roughly 3,000 staff members by 2020.
• Hold the Kenya program accountable to meet career promises to all staff – work that is connected to our mission, career growth opportunities, fair compensation.
• Overall, make One Acre Fund Kenya a great place to work.

Communication

• Proactively and effectively communicate up to country leadership, down to departments, and across to other sets of leaders.
• Set agenda and facilitate regular People Division Meetings, engaging departments with one another’s work, assuring that everyone is moving together reinforcing efforts.
• 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.

Management & Training

• Serve as direct management line to key people departments in Kenya. These include Human Resources, Corporate Operations, Training, and People Analytics. Management will include oversight, weekly reporting meetings, performance reviews and development, strategic direction and support.
• Ensure that all staff receives effective mentorship to promote career growth.
• Work with training department to run major staff training across the entire team.
• Personally lead training sessions for senior staff members.

Team & Culture

• Serve as a leader and role model to the Kenya team at large. Live the One Acre Fund values, role model a sustainable life set-up, invest in people, engage with the team.
• Lead diversity and inclusion work for the Kenya program. Identify high-impact initiatives, prioritize, and measure results.
• Manage and create feedback channels to ensure all staff groups can be heard and receive clear communication from country leadership.
• Keep pulse on team feedback, concerns and upcoming events that might destabilize and create turmoil.
• Actively contingency plan and mitigate pre-identified ‘hot spots’ or risk areas that could destabilize staff or operations.

Execution of Strategic Initiatives

• Set strategy and personally oversee key strategic initiatives within the Division. Initiatives may include: diversity and inclusion efforts, senior staff hiring, manager quality improvements, integrating data into People Division decisions.

Set KPIs and metrics to measure success.

• Regularly solicit feedback from the wider team and other departments.
• Carefully optimize current staffing structure to ensure we have the right people in the right roles; proactively plan for future staffing.

Oversee Day-to-Day Execution

• Ensure that everything the People Division does is executed to world-class standards.
• Oversee smooth execution of existing HR and staff support systems and processes.

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.

Outside & External

• 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 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 an exceptional professional with 5+ years of work experience and ideally a demonstrated passion for international development. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Strong work experiences. Examples include a demanding professional work experience, or successful entrepreneurial experience, e.g. starting a field program in a developing country, leading a conference, starting a business, solid Volunteer Service Organization accomplishments (VSO, Peace Corps, JICA, etc).
• Leadership experience at work, or outside of work.
• Humility. We are looking for passionate professionals who combine strong leadership skills with patience and a humble approach to service to join our growing family of leaders.
• A willingness to commit to living in Kakamega, Kenya 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: English required in Kenya. Swahili-speakers strongly encouraged to apply.

Preferred Start Date

2019 

Compensation

Commensurate with experience

Benefits

Health insurance, immunizations, flights, room and board

Sponsor International Candidates 

No, national applicants only