Senior Technology Product Manager: KOKO Labs

About KOKO Networks
KOKO Networks is a venture-backed climate-tech company with 1,200+ employees across East Africa & India. 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; (2) KOKO Climate, which retails the emissions reductions that occur from switching households from deforestation-based charcoal to KOKO Fuel; and (3) KOKO Club, a tech-enabled, direct-to-consumer, instant fulfillment retail platform operated in partnership with neighborhood retailers. In 2021, KOKO was selected as the world’s leading emerging markets climate technology solution by FT/IFC.

About KOKO Labs
From ideas to reality, through user research, iterative design, and commercial development, we imagine and deliver technology-based solutions for transforming life in the world’s fastest growing cities. Our team of entrepreneurs, designers and engineers works out of dedicated facilities in Nairobi (Kenya) and Gandhinagar (India), partnering with technical, commercial, academic and regulatory experts from around the world.

Your Role
The Senior Technology Product Manager role at KOKO Labs is a career-defining opportunity to drive the creation of transformative new technology-based products and services.

This role reports directly to the Chief Innovation Officer, and requires at least 50% time in-the-field with Labs team members in our target markets.

What You Will Do
You will develop a deep understanding of consumer problems, issues, needs and wants within KOKO’s Innovation Program areas, through activities such as:

• Reviewing market research data and academic literature
• Conducting your own research activities directly with target consumers
• Briefings with Program Managers, Researchers, and subject matter experts
• Monitoring competitive landscape, technologies & trends

You will support Innovation Program teams teams with technical solution ideation, concept design, rapid prototyping and iteration, by:

• Using best-practice design thinking frameworks to deeply understand the problems that you’re tackling, and define / frame those problems for the team
• Collaborating with teams in thinking big, to imagine solutions that solve these problems, considering how to build on KOKO’s existing platforms/architecture
• Scoping these solutions to their smallest coherent state to test key hypotheses with users as early as you can Guiding Designers, Engineers and experts in developing early stage functional prototypes to validate key hypotheses
• Deploying prototypes in the field, evaluating their performance through quantitative & qualitative methods, and communicating resultsManaging a prioritised “roadmap” of design and testing activities so we are always focusing on the most impactful work
  
• Capturing and sharing new domain knowledge for use in future projects
  
• You will help develop and present business cases / recommendations for breakthrough new ideas to the KOKO executive team

What You Will Bring to KOKO

• At least 5 years of experience applying design-thinking methodologies to developing innovative technology-based solutions
• Proven track record of shipping impactful hardware and software products
• Strong understanding of underlying technologies (e.g. mobile, cloud, data, IoT) and the processes for managing software engineering, hardware design and manufacturing
  
• Entrepreneurial history demonstrating personal initiative, risk-appetite & drive Keen desire to work in emerging markets, solve major problems, and serve mass-market consumers
  
• Excellent skills in communication, interpersonal relations & persuasion
• Comfort making decisions in ambiguity

What we offer

• Hybrid working model - allowing you to split your time between in-person collaboration at our labs and working remotely
• Competitive salary plus a quarterly cash bonus
• Annual compensation reviews - we reward great work
• Health insurance for you and your dependents (in Kenya & India)
• 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

KOKO is committed to gender and racial diversity in the workplace. We want to build an organization where people thrive, feel included, grow professionally, and enjoy having high impact through their work. We encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply!

KOKO is committed to gender and racial diversity in the workplace. We encourage candidates of all backgrounds to apply!