Product Manager

Job Title: Product Manager

Location: Addis Abeba

Department: Technology, Group Product and Technology Office

Reports To: Head, Products

About Kifiya:

Kifiya is an AI-powered financial and market infrastructure company advancing inclusive economic growth across Africa. We design and deploy risk decisioning systems, intelligent financial infrastructure, and market linkage platforms that unlock credit, insurance, payments, and capital access for MSMEs and smallholder farmers. We build the AI, data, and financial infrastructure that helps financial institutions serve hard-to-finance segments at scale.

Business Unit Description

The Product Office is Kifiya's single organizational home for all dedicated Product Managers. Located within the Group Product and Technology Office and led by the Head, Products, it owns customer and partner discovery, product strategy and outcomes, commercialization, lifecycle governance, and product management standards across the group.

The office works through a clear seam with Technical Product Managers in IFI and IDD. Product Managers own why a product should exist, the customer problem, the outcome it must achieve, and its commercial success. Technical Product Managers own what is built next and in what order, including backlog sequencing, acceptance criteria, technical dependencies, and release content.

Position Summary

The Product Manager owns an assigned portfolio of related products, partner solutions, or customer propositions. The role is accountable for customer and market understanding, product vision and target outcomes, roadmap intent, product briefs and business cases, commercial readiness, launch, adoption, revenue, and lifecycle performance. The role manages products at different stages and recommends where to invest, improve, consolidate, or retire.

For each product area, the Product Manager works as a peer with the named Technical Product Manager. The Product Manager owns product intent, customer and partner engagement, and commercial readiness. The Technical Product Manager owns backlog order, estimates, technical readiness, and acceptance of delivered work.

Key Responsibilities

Product Portfolio and Strategy

• Own the strategy, value proposition, target market, outcomes, and KPIs for the assigned portfolio of products.
• Maintain clear roadmap intent aligned with Kifiya's strategy and the portfolio direction set by the Head, Products.
• Recommend investment priorities using evidence on customer value, strategic fit, commercial potential, risk, platform reuse, and feasibility.
• Recommend when products should be improved, repositioned, consolidated, migrated, or retired.

Customer, Partner, and Market Discovery

• Maintain direct engagement with customers, partners, users, Commercial, Operations, Customer Support Excellence, and field teams.
• Validate the underlying problem, target customer, willingness to adopt or pay, operating realities, and regulatory or Sharia constraints before proposing investment.
• Monitor relevant market, competitor, regulatory, and technology developments and translate them into product opportunities or risks.
• Turn validated evidence into product intent briefs and business cases stating the problem, target outcome and KPI, customer, value, and known constraints.

1. Commercialization and Product Growth

• Develop product positioning and pricing and packaging recommendations with the relevant Business, Commercial, and Finance teams.
• Own commercial readiness for releases, including launch plans, customer communication, training and support materials, and adoption targets.
• Drive onboarding, activation, adoption, retention, expansion, and revenue for the assigned products.
• Monitor product economics and customer value and recommend corrective action where performance is below expectation.

Product and Technology Partnership

• Work with the named Technical Product Manager for each product area to qualify product intent and understand feasibility, dependencies, and trade-offs.
• When capacity is constrained, state which customer or business outcome must be protected while the Technical Product Manager presents sequencing or scope options and their cost.
• Review acceptance criteria for fidelity to product intent while leaving backlog order, technical requirements, estimates, and technical acceptance with the Technical Product Manager.
• Provide the commercial-readiness sign-off for releases; technical and operational readiness remain with their designated owners.
• Do not assign work directly to engineers, promise unconfirmed delivery dates, allocate engineering or DevOps capacity, or own production operations.

Performance, Risk, and Governance

• Define the measurement plan before launch and review customer outcomes, adoption, usage, revenue, risk, and service impact after release.
• Use customer feedback, certified metrics, and market evidence to improve the product or change direction.
• Ensure product intent incorporates applicable privacy, security, regulatory, operational, data-governance, AI-by-design, customer-outcome, and Sharia requirements and secures the required approvals.
• Maintain current product decisions, assumptions, risks, dependencies, and lifecycle status for every assigned product.
• Keep stakeholders aligned on direction and trade-offs and escalate unresolved conflicts through the Head, Products and the relevant technology leadership.

Key Outputs

• A current product strategy and roadmap intent for the assigned portfolio.
• Validated product intent briefs, business cases, target outcomes, and KPIs for proposed investments.
• Documented customer, partner, and market insight that is traceable to product decisions.
• Commercial-readiness records, launch plans, and adoption plans for product releases.
• Regular product performance reporting covering customer outcomes, adoption, usage, revenue, risk, and service impact.
• Clear lifecycle recommendations and action plans for investment, improvement, consolidation, migration, or retirement.
• Measurable improvement in adoption, active use, retention, customer or partner satisfaction, and revenue, supported by a high-quality product demand signal.

Qualifications and Experience Education

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Economics, Finance, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science, Design, or a related discipline.
• A relevant postgraduate qualification or recognized product-management training is advantageous but not mandatory.

Qualification

• Minimum seven years of progressive experience in product management, digital products, financial services technology, platform businesses, or a closely related field, including at least three years owning several products or a complex product area.
• Demonstrated experience in customer discovery, product strategy, product briefs and business cases, commercialization, launch, adoption, performance measurement, and lifecycle decisions.
• Experience in fintech, banking technology, financial infrastructure, payments, lending, insurance, embedded finance, SaaS, platforms, data products, AI-enabled products, or another regulated environment.
• Experience working effectively with engineering, data, operations, commercial, finance, risk, legal, compliance, and customer-support teams.
• Strong commercial and analytical capability, including product economics, pricing and packaging input, adoption funnels, and evidence-based decision making.
• Sufficient technical fluency to work credibly with APIs, data, AI, cloud platforms, integrations, security, reliability, and delivery trade-offs without taking over technical ownership.
• Experience with B2B, B2B2C, multi-tenant, partner-led, or multi-country products is preferred. Experience in Africa or comparable emerging markets and with underserved customer segments is advantageous.

Core Competencies

• Customer and market insight: Builds decisions from observed customer problems, behavior, market evidence, and operating reality.
• Product and portfolio judgment: Makes clear choices across several products and lifecycle stages rather than treating every request as equal.
• Outcome ownership: Defines success through customer and business results, not feature volume or activity.
• Commercial acumen: Understands value propositions, pricing and packaging, adoption, revenue, partner economics, and product viability.
• Data-informed decision making: Uses customer evidence, certified metrics, experiments, and financial information while recognizing uncertainty.
• Cross-functional influence: Aligns stakeholders and resolves trade-offs without relying only on hierarchy.
• Technical and platform fluency: Engages credibly on APIs, data, AI, platforms, integration, security, and delivery constraints while respecting technical ownership.
• Responsible product judgment: Balances growth and innovation with inclusion, fairness, privacy, security, regulation, customer outcomes, and trust.
• Clear communication and discipline: Explains product intent and trade-offs concisely and maintains reliable briefs, records, decisions, reviews, and follow-through.