Job Summary
M-KOPA is seeking a Senior Product Manager for the M-KOPA Mobile Product.
Minimum Qualification:Bachelor
Experience Level:Senior level
Experience Length:4 years
Job Description
Who we are
M-KOPA is the world’s leading pay-as-you-go “PayGo’” energy provider to off grid homes. We’ve developed a better way to provide affordable, safe and clean energy to millions of people. It was the first company to launch a SIM-enabled pay-as-you-go solar system anywhere in the world. M-KOPA is now one of the fastest growing power providers in Africa, connecting solar to 500 new homes each day. Every night, hundreds of thousands of homes and 2.5 million people in East Africa are using an M-KOPA Solar home system.
From this foundation, M-KOPA has launched a highly successful PayGo phone product in partnership with Samsung and Nokia. Our phone is a key new product line for the company. The phone can be our customer’s first stand-alone product, or it can be a purchased following good payment history with one of our solar products.
In June 2017, M-KOPA was named on MIT Technology Review’s 2017 list of 50 Smartest Companies. In March 2016, M-KOPA emerged boldest at the Financial Times Arcelor Mittal – Boldness In Business Awards in the developing markets category. In February 2016, M-KOPA was recognized as the Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets at the Global Mobile Awards. In 2015, M-KOPA was recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the Top 50 Companies Changing the World and won the Zayed Future Energy Prize.
M-KOPA is backed by leading growth-stage investors including:
• The CDC group - UK’s development Finance Institution that has invested in 1,245 businesses throughout Africa and South Asia. They were founded in 1948, making them the world's oldest DFI.
• Generation Investment Management LLP (GIM) - A London-based investment management firm with over $10bn assets under management and an investment style that focuses on both commercial and sustainability factors. Generation was founded in 2004 by former US Vice President Al Gore and former Goldman Sachs Asset Management CEO David Blood.
• Stanbic Bank – One of the leading financial services organizations that aims to be the leading corporate and investment banking business in, for and across Africa.
The role
M-KOPA is seeking aSenior Product Managerfor the M-KOPA Mobile Product. This role sits at the nexus between the business and technology to drive the software development for our most important product. The essential functions of the mobile software product include secure device locking, customer acquisition and registration, account management, and mobile money payment integrations with our telecom partners. Our goal is for the M-KOPA mobile application to become a personalized hub for our customers, allowing them to manage their loans, view their balances, pay for their products in installments, request and upgrade to new services, and support their financial development. While there has always been software that allows M-KOPA to control the devices that we offer, the M-KOPA
mobile product represents a fundamental shift towards managing customer facing software products across the business.
Responsibilities:
• You will be the owner of the M-KOPA Mobile Software Product.
• You will hear big ideas from all corners of the business and distill them into our mobile product roadmap.
• You will help many business stakeholders come to consensus on backlog prioritization and clarify relevant trade-offs.
• You will manage the product to achieve goals and hit feature launch timelines.
• You are an excellent collaborator. You will find the right methods to communicate with internal stakeholders to gather feature requirements, share updates on timelines, design around constraints, carefully manage expectations, and craft appropriate communications for the appropriate audience.
• Likewise, you will collaborate closely with engineering during the development cycle to make judgment calls as engineering constraints arise, with a bias towards shipping valuable work each sprint and iteratively improving on it later.
• You will become the authority on our mobile software, a resource for others in the company to rely on.
• You will work closely with market research teams to understand user needs, define a vision for the product, and advocate for the voice of the customer throughout the product lifecycle.
• To get a broad array of stakeholders aligned and invested, you will draft and present “product brief” and process map documentation to outline high-level scope for Epic and Feature level work.
• You will write feature specifications in user stories along with acceptance criteria in Gherkin syntax format.
• Using agile product process, you will move the user stories through refinement to meet our definition of ready.
• You enjoy communicating visually. You are comfortable refining wireframes and process maps to guide product design. From there, you will actively drive the design process with our nascent product designer, and perhaps outside designers.
• You will stay up to date with the requirements that our grant obligations place on our software roadmap and advocate for language in our grant proposals that is best for our core business.
• You lead by example, modeling Product Management best practices for the product team and the business. You are comfortable advocating for process improvements that will clear the path for you to do your best work.
Required Experience:
Required education: No requirement
Required relevant work experience: 4 years, including 1 year on a native mobile app
Required languages: English (Spoken: fluent | Written: fluent)
Preferred Experience:
Preferred education: Masters of Business Administration
Preferred relevant work experience: 6 years, mostly on native mobile apps
Preferred languages: Fluent in English and proficient in a national language from one of our target markets
PLEASE NOTE:
M-KOPA Solar is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to assembling a diverse, broadly trained staff. Women, minorities and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply. In compliance with applicable laws and in furtherance of its commitment to fostering an environment that welcomes and embraces diversity, M-KOPA does not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, creed, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy and parenting status), disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status or genetic information in its programs or activities, including employment.
M-KOPA, as a policy, does not collect/charge any money as a pre-employment or post-employment requirement. This means that we never ask for ‘recruitment fees’, ‘processing fees’, ‘interview fees’ or any other kind of money in exchange for offer letters or interviews at any time during the hiring process.
