Product Director— SIFA

Who We Are! 🌍 Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more young people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. Educate! prepares youth in Africa to learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by: • Introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary and • Delivering livelihood boot camps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women. To date, more than 500,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa. Educate! is a team of over 300 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations, and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures , Livelihood Impact Fund , Jack Dorsey’s #startsmall , CIFF and Echidna Giving . Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award , and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio , an Al Jazeera documentary , BBC , The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator . In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work. Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. Good to note: To Our Awesome Applicants! 🚀💫 We know that incredible candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don’t meet every requirement. If this role excites you, we encourage you to apply! We’re looking for passionate individuals who believe in our mission and can bring unique perspectives to our team—not just those who check every box. We value diversity and strongly encourage women and individuals from all backgrounds to apply. Position Overview At Educate! , we create and deliver learning experiences reshaping what youth employment looks like across Africa — building products that reach hundreds of thousands of young people in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. As Product Director for SIFA, you will set strategic direction across a complex, high-ambition digital product, leveraging impact through Product Leads, cross-product coordination, and a high-performing team of designers, engineers, coaching experts, and product associates. SIFA is Educate!'s AI-powered business coaching product, delivered digitally to help out-of-school youth micro-entrepreneurs make profit visible, strengthen cashflow discipline, and reduce capital trapped in customer credit. It is the product with the clearest ambition to become the digital backbone of the entire Educate! portfolio — scalable, data-generating, and increasingly intelligent with every cohort it runs. The Product Director joining now steps into a product that has moved from concept to MVP, has generated its first real evidence of impact, and is now navigating the most consequential strategic decisions in its lifecycle: how to go from 1,200 youth to 20,000, and then to scale the product to millions of youth. This role demands more than oversight of a well-run team. You will weigh external research, evaluation findings, and experimental results to guide high-stakes trade-offs under genuine uncertainty. You will own the investment case, resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs, and influence business unit priorities through the quality of your product strategy — operating within the strategic direction set by the business unit leader while exercising real strategic authority within that frame. The decisions you make here carry very high irreversibility. Investment memo recommendations, stage-gate calls, and portfolio positioning choices for SIFA materially affect Educate!'s digital strategy for years. This role is for a product leader who understands what it means to hold that kind of accountability and who can build a team culture where evidence quality, learning rigour, and strategic coherence are non-negotiable. For an experienced product leader who wants to operate with a high degree of ownership, build a strong team, and work in a genuinely mission-driven environment, this role offers the chance to do your most impactful work. Expected Impact This role sits at the most consequential inflection point in SIFA's lifecycle. The product has moved from concept to MVP and generated its first credible evidence of impact — and the Product Director joining now will determine whether that evidence holds at scale, and whether SIFA becomes the digital backbone of Educate!'s portfolio or remains a promising pilot. Within this role's tenure, SIFA is accountable for the following outcomes: • MVP(Most Valuable Player) v4 completes with a clear go/iterate/pause recommendation for the 5,000-youth pilot, grounded in profit uplift, engagement, credit recovery, delivery model viability, and operational readiness evidence. • The (Cost Per Youth) CPY model for SIFA is fully costed and pressure-tested against the 100,000-youth cost point, with a clear ROI narrative presented to the Investment Committee. SIFA's data architecture is live, decision-useful, and actively used in quarterly OKR reviews — with the product dashboard reflecting current-stage metrics including profit uplift, engagement, credit recovery, micro-action completion, and platform availability. • By the end of 2027, SIFA will serve 20,000 enrolled users through its digital coaching product, with evidence of sustained engagement and measurable business performance improvements at scale. • By 2028, SIFA will reach 2 million youth, backed by a completed external Randomized Control and Treatment Study) RCT confirming a 30% income gain and a minimum 6X 3-year income ROI at the 100,000-youth cost point. • By 2029, SIFA will operate as the evidence-backed digital backbone of Educate!'s portfolio — with a proven impact model, a live data pipeline generating continuous learning, and an AI coaching layer that makes the entire livelihoods and ESS portfolio smarter, cheaper, and more attractive to payers with every cohort. What You’ll Do🌟 Product Strategy • Own SIFA's full strategic direction from MVP to portfolio backbone — setting the investment stage strategy, building the evidence case for the external RCT, and pressure-testing the CPY model against the 100,000-youth cost point. Ensure every stage-gate decision is grounded in evidence, not momentum, and that SIFA's AI coaching layer is developed with enough rigor to anchor the broader portfolio strategy. • Own and drive SIFA's product strategy within the strategic direction, problems to solve, and priorities set by the business unit leader — including the investment stage strategy, next-stage decisions, and the investment memo — with full accountability for the quality of evidence, analysis, and recommendations presented to leadership and the Investment Committee • Maintain active alignment with the business unit leader on product direction, payer strategy, and organizational priorities; surface strategic implications and trade-offs proactively so the business unit leader can shape the frame rather than react to decisions already made • Lead stage retreats and quarterly planning cycles within the strategic frame of the divisional OKRs and organizational strategy; set stage and quarterly OKRs that reflect both product evidence and organizational priorities; bring a proactive perspective on opportunities and risks beyond the current roadmap • Own and evolve SIFA's core strategy artifacts — value proposition, theory of change, lean canvas, user persona (including the "Monica" persona), skills map, graduation criteria, product risk register, and product roadmap — and keep them live and decision-relevant across stages • Own LX strategy for SIFA; ensure SIFA's daily coaching rhythm (evening wrap, morning coach, daytime nudge) is grounded in strategic intent and drives measurable behavior change; hold design partners accountable to agreed quality standards • Own the gender equity and safeguarding strategies for SIFA in alignment with organizational standards • Own the CPY narrative and full product strategy budget; lead BvA reviews; present the investment case to the Investment Committee and drive cost efficiency decisions rooted in the product model — calibrating feature investment against the 100,000-youth cost point and 6X ROI target • Own the product dashboard; ensure it reflects the right current-stage metrics — profit uplift, engagement, credit recovery, micro-action completion, and platform availability — and is actively used in strategic decision-making • Adapt and apply organisational standards to SIFA's context and contribute to new standards in collaboration with functional leaders Product Team Management • Defines and drives the learning agenda across SIFA's MVP-to-scale transition — setting the evidence standards that gate each stage, weighing external research on digital coaching and youth behavior change, and ensuring every go/no-go decision is based on evidence the team has actively designed to collect. The Director owns not just whether evidence is gathered, but whether it is decision-useful and held to a standard that can withstand external scrutiny at the RCT stage. • Set and own SIFA's learning agenda — defining what must be learned at each stage (retention and habit formation at 1,200 youth; delivery model viability at 5,000; RCT readiness at scale), how evidence will be generated, and how findings feed into stage-gate decisions and the investment memo. • Proactively widen the evidence base by curating external research on digital coaching, behavior change, and youth livelihoods (in partnership with the evaluation team); deepen the team's interpretation of evaluation results; shape qualitative research to complement quantitative findings. • Collaborate with the evaluation team to design and oversee SIFA's evaluation plan; ensure pilots, experiments, and research activities — including pre-post profit analyses using the panel method, credit recovery tracking, and engagement monitoring — are executed well and synthesized into clear, actionable findings. • Own the integrity and decision-usefulness of SIFA's data architecture; integrate external research, evaluation findings, experimental results, user feedback, and operational signals to make high-stakes decisions under uncertainty. • Own the full suite of SIFA product builds — LX flows, WhatsApp and Webapp journeys, points system, micro-actions, onboarding and activation design, coaching scripts, Business Advisor toolkit, and all field and print materials — to standard and on schedule • Own the quality control strategy; define how quality is assessed and how findings feed back into design and the learning agenda. • Validate design decisions against CPY constraints and the delivery model; escalate design trade-offs that exceed cost or delivery constraints. • Maintain a structured feedback loop with the implementation lead; conduct periodic check-ins to monitor gaps between SIFA's designed coaching experience and what youth actually encounter. Product Development (Discovery and Experimentation) • Own the relationships required to take SIFA to the RCT and beyond — including tech and evaluation partners, Business Advisor and CEA networks, community-based recruitment channels (including table banking groups), and prospective payers who will need to see credible evidence before committing to digital coaching at scale. Resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs proactively, and ensure the broader leadership team understands SIFA's portfolio role and is aligned on what the product needs to deliver it. • Maintain active alignment with the business unit leader — surfacing strategic implications, trade-offs, and product risks in time for them to shape the frame; ensure the Business Unit leader is never surprised by product decisions that have wider organisational consequences • Resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs proactively; manage upward, downward, and across functions before issues escalate to the business unit leader or MD • Involve key stakeholders — including youth (the "Monica" persona), Business Advisors, CEAs, impact unit leaders, and functional partners — in setting and validating SIFA's product direction; maintain their understanding of and alignment with the product strategy • Support the MD or Country Lead in broader leadership initiatives while maintaining clear accountability for SIFA • Ensure cross-functional workstreams — with impact unit, LX, metrics, tech, and implementation teams — execute coherently and in line with SIFA's product priorities • Represent SIFA clearly in organisational and leadership forums, planning cycles, and funder conversations; maintain accountability for the product area even as organisational priorities shift. Stakeholder Management • Maintain active alignment with the business unit leader — surfacing strategic implications, trade-offs, and product risks in time for them to shape the frame; ensure the BU leader is never surprised by product decisions that have wider organizational consequences • Manage upward, downward, and across functions proactively; resolve cross-product and cross-functional alignment challenges before they escalate to the business unit leader or MD • Support the MD in broader leadership initiatives while maintaining clear accountability for the product area • Ensure cross-functional initiatives and country-wide leadership initiative execute effectively in the entire impact unit • Build and sustain working relationships with functional leaders across design, training, gender equity, and safeguarding; create structured moments for their input during the development cycle • Represent the product clearly in organizational and leadership forums; maintain accountability for the product area as priorities evolve Who You Are 🦸‍♀️🦸‍♂️ • You bring 10+ years of experience in product management, product leadership, or closely related roles, with a strong track record of shaping strategic direction across complex or multi-product portfolios — not just executing against existing plans • You have led products end-to-end, from defining strategic hypotheses and impact models, to building business cases and financial projections, securing executive buy-in and funding approval, and refining strategy based on performance, evidence, and learning outcomes • You are confident making high-stakes decisions in ambiguous environments, and you take ownership of both the outcomes and the learning that comes from them • You are deeply experienced in lean startup methodologies, design thinking, and agile product development, and you know how to set high standards while coaching teams to consistently apply them • You have experience managing and developing senior product practitioners, building cultures grounded in accountability, continuous learning, experimentation, and rigorous product thinking • You are highly analytical and able to synthesize qualitative insights, quantitative data, financial analysis, and evaluation findings into clear strategic decisions and priorities • You are skilled at driving alignment across products, teams, and senior stakeholders, including engaging effectively with Managing Directors, leadership teams, funders, and external partners • You are an excellent communicator who can make complex product strategy, trade-offs, evidence, and impact easy to understand for both technical and non-technical audiences • You lead with empathy and curiosity, taking time to deeply understand the realities, motivations, and challenges faced by underserved and marginalized communities • You are passionate about creating transformative opportunities for youth and are energized by environments centered on continuous improvement, innovation, and learning • You are excited by the challenge of building and scaling digital products for low-income or out-of-school youth in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly through mobile-first channels such as WhatsApp, SMS, and web applications • You have experience or strong interest in areas such as AI-powered coaching, behaviour change design, livelihoods programming, or evidence-driven product development, including exposure to RCTs, impact measurement, or investor/funder reporting frameworks • You understand or are eager to learn about micro-entrepreneurship and informal sector realities within East Africa, and you bring a user-centered approach to designing products that create meaningful impact • You resonate with our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below) and learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here What We Offer • A vibrant, mission-driven environment with a supportive and fun team. • Flexibility - Fully remote or hybrid work environment (location dependent) • Competitive salary based on experience. • Competitive benefits based on location • Learning & growth opportunities • This is a Fixed term contract with a possibility of extension based on performance Application Process : Rolling basis, interviews happening soon! Terms • Location is Remote (East Africa preferred) Our Culture & Tenets(Values) 🌱 We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey. • We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We are purpose-driven, focused on impact, and prioritize what truly matters. We listen to youth, design our efforts around their needs, and ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences they value. • We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results—proactively identifying problems and seeking solutions without waiting or stopping at what's requested. • We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded and continuously try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams. • We are One Team, Many Views - We value all individuals, believe diverse ideas and open dialogue drive excellence, foster a supportive and respectful environment where everyone can freely express themselves. We work as one team and prioritize the organization's mission over personal or team interests. • We have the Startup Mindset - We innovate relentlessly to grow our impact, we never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.”We constantly challenge the status quo, embrace change, and move quickly toward our vision. Unafraid of failure, we question anything that hinders progress. Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team. We’re committed to ensuring all candidates are screened for child and youth safety . As part of the process, candidates must successfully complete our standard background verification and safeguarding review in accordance with local legal standards . Educate! reserves the right to withdraw an offer of employment if any screening results indicate potential risks to youth.