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
Educate!, the largest youth skills service provider in East Africa, is seeking a Product Owner to join our ambitious and cross-functional Technology team. We are looking for a product professional who is excited and passionate about solving consumer-facing problems, developing product roadmaps, and executing those plans to bring value to end-users. The ideal hire will help the product team meet and exceed its goals by translating strategic business initiatives into technology products. The Product Owner will be part of a new and growing Technology team and will provide support to the product, delivery and M&E teams.
In this role you will have a chance to collaborate with a variety of stakeholders to understand requirements for the tech products/solutions, develop product roadmaps and project-manage the entire tech product/solution development cycle.
The ideal hire is passionate about working with data to drive improvements in user experience and excited to work with simpler technology tools such as USSD, SMS, WhatsApp through Telerivet, Echomobile, Textit etc. that are easily accessible to youths who don’t have access to smartphones. You’ll join a motivated, passionate, overachieving international team with a vision to design solutions that will impact millions of youth annually across Africa.
You are the right fit for this role if you:
- Are a master coordinator and exceptional project manager
- Are analytical and data-driven
- Possess a broad understanding of the tech product development process
- Have independently driven the design of technology products in a team, with a strong focus on the end-user
- Have strong communication and interpersonal skills
What You’ll Do🌟
Requirements gathering: Translating Product strategy into product development specifics
- Gather all information from cross-functional teams to translate strategy into clear product specifics.
- Assist business stakeholders to define and refine their requests
- Collaborate with a variety of stakeholders to define the relevant personas, user journeys, and functional requirements.
- Drive decision-making with internal partners
- Translate requirements into product designs
- Develop and own a product strategy that is clearly articulated, easily understood, and delivers meaningful value to our customers and business over time
- Identify areas for modification in existing programs and subsequently develop these modifications
User-focused/Customer-centered product design
We need our Product Owner to build processes and practices to continuously gather and address usability issues with our technology products.
- Lead ideation for the needs identified- creating designs based on requirements and strategy
- Construct systems and processes to gather data on how users actually experience it on a day-to-day basis
- Own process of integrating customer feedback into products
Market Research and User Testing
- Research and analyze the users and the roadmap for the product
- Plan, prepare and conduct research on potential solutions
- Collect quantitative product data and metrics through market research
- Test and evaluated new designs/products
- Research and analyze the way our data can be used and then drive improvements in user experience.
Project Management
- Build and execute an actionable roadmap that empowers developers to realize the product strategy
- Providing vision and direction to the development team and stakeholders to achieve the product vision
- Collaborate closely with Design, Programs, and M&E teams to drive the execution of the product development team
- Plan and prioritize product feature backlog and development for the product
- Lead the planning of product release plans and set the expectation for the delivery of new functionalities
- Developer management: oversee development of product features either through external consultants or development
- Keep abreast with Agile/Scrum best practices and new trends
- Develop quality assurance procedures
Who You Are 🦸♀️🦸♂️
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, is nice to have or any other Technology related course, and a minimum of 3 years of work experience.
- Experience building both web and mobile applications with offline capabilities.
- Possess a broad understanding of the tech product development process; and have created product roadmaps, user journey maps and has experience with backlog grooming and prioritization.
- Experienced with using qualitative and quantitative data (especially from A/B tests) to make product decisions.
- Experience working with a startup is a plus.
- Experience working with program delivery and data collection platforms such as USSD, SMS, WhatsApp etc.
- Basic knowledge of MySQL & Postgres databases, JIRA or any other project management tool and Figma.
- Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here
What We Offer
- A vibrant, mission-driven environment with a supportive and fun team.
- Competitive salary based on experience.
- Learning & growth opportunities
Application Process: Rolling basis, interviews happening soon!
Terms
- Location is Da res Salaam, Tanzania
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, you’ll need to provide a Certificate of Good Conduct. Educate! reserves the right to withdraw employment offers if any risks to youth are identified.
