Job title: Chief Product Officer
Reporting to: Chief Executive Officer
Hours: 8:00 – 17:30, Monday- Friday
Salary: Negotiable as per experience and national benchmarks
Location: Nairobi
Company Overview
4G Capital is the market leader in unsecured working capital lending in Kenya and Uganda.
We empower micro and small businesses to grow and succeed by providing instant access
credit and training to unlock business growth, maximising the impact for micro business
owners. Products and services are delivered via mobile money and proprietary fintech
systems and data-led algorithmic underwriting. The award-winning company is Africa’s
highest scoring fintech B Corp, the highest standard in global ESG and impact assessment.
Purpose: To Unlock Human Potential for Good
Mission: To Grow Business with Capital and Knowledge
Vision: The first choice for MSME growth in Africa
Job Purpose
The Chief Product Officer (CPO) is a leadership role responsible for developing and managing
the company’s product portfolio, ensuring alignment with overall business strategy,
operations, and technology advancements. The CPO will serve as the bridge between
technology engineering, operations, and strategy teams to establish a clear and inspiring
product vision and strategy. The role involves leading the complete rebuild of the core
financial lending platform, managing product development cycles, and implementing
efficient processes to enhance product development transparency and effectiveness.
Roles & Responsibilities
Act as the liaison between the engineering, data, operations and strategy teams to
continuously adapt a clear and inspiring technology product vision and strategy.
● Support and inform the overall technology vision and strategy together with the Board,
CEO and CTO
● Determine overall product roadmap to achieve the product vision in alignment with
team priorities and industry technology trends
● Support the end-to-end evolution of 4G Capital’s core financial lending platform,
identifying approach, requirement definitions, architectural prototyping, technical
build planning, and transition planning to manage evolution of optimal processes,
features and capabilities.
● Actively manage product development backlogs for existing platforms, prioritising
new development requests alongside long term product roadmap activities to plan
development cycles
● Support business teams to define new product features following human centered
design methodologies; document process flow diagrams, wireframes, and functional
and technical requirements to allow for successful tech team development
● Implement and oversee processes to make product development cycles more
efficient and transparent for both IT and ops / strategy teams
● Identify test plans for newly developed product features; organize and oversee user
acceptance testing for final feature development signoff
● Define release process and schedule to bring newly developed product features to
market
● Develop and implement product change management and communications plans
that close the communications gap between business and IT teams while garnering
awareness, understanding, and support of the technology product and development
efforts within the organization
● Support the development of technology product related marketing and/or business
development materials as needed
Required Skills for a Chief Product Officer
● Degree in Finance, Business Administration, Computer Science or other relevant field
● At least five years of proven Product Management experience working at the
intersection of technology and operations to bring new products to market for
multinational organizations; at least three years of product management experience
for multinational organizations within East Africa desired
● At least five years of experience leading multinational technology development teams
across North America, Africa, and Asia, with proven success managing and
integrating remote team members with on the ground development teams
● At least three years of experience managing financial lending platform development
from conception to implementation within East Africa; direct experience with leading
telco mobile money and SMS platform integration necessary
● Experience successfully executing a full end-to-end platform of a major financial
services or e-commerce platform that used a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) or
Microservices
● Knowledge of human centered design methodologies and experience implementing
them within East Africa across a variety of technical product modalities (USSD, SMS,
mobile smart applications, web applications, desktop platforms, etc)
● Experience leading software development projects directly executive level sponsors,
and proven success liaising and communicating technology needs and updates to
multinational executive leadership teams
● Experience developing organization-level digital strategies and business cases for
technology investment
● At least five years of experiencing developing and successfully implementing
organizational change management and communications strategies for major new
technology products, processes, and features within organizations, to increase the
likelihood of successful adoption by business teams
● At least five years of experience designing and leading business training programs
around new products and features developed
● At least three years of experience leading technology product related business
development and marketing activities within East Africa, with a demonstrated ability
to raise funding for technology project when required
● Experience managing technology multinational software consultants, including the
understanding of contracting, invoicing, and deliverable management mechanisms
● Strong market orientation, entrepreneurial and innovative thinker
● Proven ability to work independently, delivering high-quality end products
● Previous successful experience mentoring and building capacity of staff
● High proficiency in PowerPoint and Excel; experience using software development and
business work planning tools like Jira and Wrike
● Verbal and written fluency in English
● Ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, employing effective time
management and organizational skills
● Ability to work independently and as a team to meet deadlines, goals and objectives
● Passion for learning new technologies and programming languages
● Resourcefulness and troubleshooting aptitude
● Excellent critical thinking skills
Relationships
- CEO; Direct line manager, who will offer ongoing support and supervision, as well as the conduit to the Management Board
- CTO; Liaise with CTO to establish timelines, product roadmap and design
- Subordinates/Direct Reports; Determine work priorities; schedule work assignments; select, orient, train, evaluate work performance and recommend associated personnel action; provide staff with clear and concise written guidelines.
- External Stakeholders; Manage and maintain these strategic alliances
