Principal Product Manager
Nairobi
Product /
Full-Time /
On-site
About KOKO Networks
KOKO Networks is a venture-backed climate-tech company with 1,800+ employees across East Africa, India, and the United Kingdom. Our mission is to imagine and deliver technology that improves life in the world’s fastest growing cities. We offer a fast-paced and highly collaborative work environment with significant opportunities for professional growth. Our core lines of business currently include: (1) KOKO Fuel, an ultra-clean liquid bioethanol cooking fuel solution delivered via a network of smart fuel ATMs and leveraging existing downstream liquid fuels infrastructure; and (2) KOKO Climate, which retails the emissions reductions that occur from switching households from deforestation-based charcoal to KOKO Fuel. In 2021, KOKO was selected as the world’s leading emerging markets climate technology solution by FT/IFC.
Your Role
As a Principal Product Manager you will lead our product efforts in one business area and play a key role in enabling KOKO’s long term success, including our expansion across and beyond Kenya. This is a very visible leadership position and has the potential to help increase revenue, make complex logistics and operations more efficient, and delight our colleagues, customers, and partners.
You will be a member of the Product leadership team and work directly with executive team members on key company priorities and with other leaders across Engineering, Operations, Marketing & Sales, and Manufacturing.
This is both a creative and analytical role - building on insights gained from data, refining product strategies, and building solutions to better acquire and retain customers, support our employees, and broaden our product offering.
This role requires significant time in the local market and close to our operations in Nairobi. We will consider candidates based there, willing to relocate there, or able to travel there for ~30% of their time.
What You Will Do
- You will be a senior leader in the organisation, defining the KOKO product roadmap and vision, identifying opportunities to innovate and drive value for our customers and colleagues
- You will lead across the entire product lifecycle, from research and requirements to working with designers and engineers, to user testing, to measuring impact and optimising
- You will think about the end-to-end customer and user journeys, across functional and solution boundaries to ensure their experience is compelling, coherent, and consistent
- You will help us build, lead, and mentor a world class team of product managers
- You will develop strong partnerships with KOKO business teams and partners and empathy for our customers, creating continuous feedback loops that allow us to better understand their pain points
- You will ensure we are solving the right problems by sourcing input from multiple channels and prioritising effectively to drive maximum impact
- You’ll create an environment that fosters high quality, metrics-driven experimentation and set high standards for how we measure product success
- You will bring and build deep domain knowledge and experience; people across the company will look to you as an expert; and you leverage it through teaching, guiding and coaching others
What You Will Bring to KOKO
- We are looking for a hands-on leader with a strong blend of business and technical savvy as well as strategic thinking and tactical execution, who is passionate about shaping markets in Kenya and beyond
- 8+ years experience in product management with a strong track record of shipping high quality products
- Proven ability to deliver business results by developing, prioritising and delivering on a roadmap that addresses customer needs and pain points via innovative products
- You may have managed PM teams but would prefer to get back closer to the product work itself
- We strongly prefer if you have had experience working in combined software and hardware businesses (with manufacturing and logistics)
- You are a strong leader, very confident and competent at leading individuals and teams.
- You have excellent communication skills in any medium
- You have a growth mindset; a willingness to own problems
- You are comfortable with ambiguity, have a passion for building product, a desire to make things better, and a sense of optimism
- You’re able to easily switch between thinking creatively and analytically for best results
What we offer
- We believe that our people are critical for our ambitious growth plans in Kenya and beyond. We want to build an organisation where people thrive, feel included, grow professionally, and enjoy having high impact through their work.
- Competitive salary plus a quarterly cash bonus
- Annual compensation reviews - we reward great work
- Hybrid working model - allowing you to split your time between in-person collaboration at one of our offices and working remotely
- Health insurance for you and your dependents (in Kenya)
- 21 days of annual leave plus public holidays plus examination leave
- Ongoing investment in you and your skills, incl. full access to over 5,000 online courses
- The right equipment for the job - a choice of MacBook, Windows, or Linux laptop
KOKO is committed to gender and racial diversity in the workplace. We encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply!
