Product Specialist (Clinical Trials Database) at African Academy of Sciences

AAS/PSCT/19/001

Organisation Overview

The African Academy of Sciences (The AAS) is a non-aligned, non-political, not-for-profit Pan-African organization headquartered in Nairobi, with a hosting agreement with the government of Kenya. The AAS’s vision is to see transformed lives on the African continent through science. It is the only continental Academy in Africa enjoying the support and recognition of the African Union, and with joint programmes with NEPAD Agency, now the African Union Development Agency (AUDA), as well as several governments and major international partners. It has a tripartite mandate: to recognize excellence through its highly prestigious fellowship and award schemes; to provide advisory and think tank functions for shaping the continent’s Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) strategies and policies; and to implement key STI programmes aimed at addressing Africa’s developmental challenges.

Initiative Overview

The AAS and its partners who coalesce under the Coalition of African Research & Innovation (CARI) seek the creation of a global public good that aggregates clinical research centre intelligence across the African ecosystem. The proposed clinical research platform will need to integrate with existing registries and be interoperable, be compliant with existing data protection and privacy guidelines, have capability to import site feasibility data and lists from a wide variety of Excel and CSV sources including feasibility questionnaires, site lists, etc, allow for exportation of data and produce reports, be optimized for search engines and be enabled to track user activity among other requirements.

The initiative to aggregate data on clinical trials sites and capacities in Africa aims to:

• Promote African research centres by providing a platform that improves their visibility, optimizes the use of clinical trials grants across research centres and helps them sustain operations and staffing beyond individual grants through collaboration across the clinical research ecosystem.
•  Reduce unnecessary duplication of effort in identifying, collecting and submitting clinical trial site feasibility assessments at the beginning of every new project.
• Develop a robust, open access, and up-to-date database of the African clinical research landscape including a catalogue of existing clinical trial capacity, regulatory requirements, performance, and predictability for clinical and translational sciences across countries.
• Increase capability to understand where there are duplication and gaps in capacity and funding and enable transparency of future investments and their impact.

Position Overview

A Product Specialist is a professional responsible for prioritizing, and evaluating work generated by a delivery team built on a backlog of user gathered requirements and aligned with project goals.  The candidate will act on behalf of the stakeholder and be able to make product decisions based on a deep understanding of the overall project objective.  The incumbent will also be expected to work in close collaboration with other AESA managed programmes in order to achieve the overall strategic goals of The AAS.

Responsibilities

Key Duties and Responsibilities

• Participate in requirement refinement planning
• Provide vision and direction to the technical development manager and team
• Communicate technical decision to AAS stakeholders throughout the project
• Ensure that the team always has an adequate amount of prior approved tasks to work on
• Plan and prioritize product feature backlog and development for the product
• Define and align to product vision, road-map and growth opportunities
• Provide backlog management, iteration planning, and elaboration of the user stories
• Work closely with technical delivery Product Management team to create and maintain a product backlog and delivery momentum
• Contribute to the planning product release plans and set expectations for delivery of new functionalities
• Communicate between the steering group and technical team to enable the continuous development of the product
• Participate in requirement gathering workshops

Qualifications

• Bachelor Computer Science, Engineering or similar relevant field, interest or experience
• Previous working experience as a Product specialist for at least 1-year desirable
• User Experience or web development or similar relevant field of interest or experience
• Knowledge of agile process and principles
• Outstanding communication, presentation and leadership skills
• Excellent organizational and time management skills
• Sharp analytical and problem-solving skills
• Attention to details

Knowledge and skills

• Possess well-developed interpersonal skills and ability to network and communicate across different levels of the internal organization and with external partners;
• Able to perform work independently with minimal supervision, but also participate as a team member
• Possess strong attention to detail and maintaining a timely and efficient work-flow;
• Have strong planning organizational skills and ability to work under pressure;
• Ability to multi-task and to prioritize work amidst competing demands;
• Have unquestionable integrity, confidentiality and respect.