Product Director— SIFA
educate • East Africa
No Relocation
Posted: May 25, 2026
Job Description
Position Overview
At Educate!, we create and deliver learning experiences reshaping what youth employment looks like across Africa — building products that reach hundreds of thousands of young people in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. As Product Director for SIFA, you will set strategic direction across a complex, high-ambition digital product, leveraging impact through Product Leads, cross-product coordination, and a high-performing team of designers, engineers, coaching experts, and product associates.
SIFA is Educate!'s AI-powered business coaching product, delivered digitally to help out-of-school youth micro-entrepreneurs make profit visible, strengthen cashflow discipline, and reduce capital trapped in customer credit. It is the product with the clearest ambition to become the digital backbone of the entire Educate! portfolio — scalable, data-generating, and increasingly intelligent with every cohort it runs. The Product Director joining now steps into a product that has moved from concept to MVP, has generated its first real evidence of impact, and is now navigating the most consequential strategic decisions in its lifecycle: how to go from 1,200 youth to 20,000, and then to scale the product to millions of youth.
This role demands more than oversight of a well-run team. You will weigh external research, evaluation findings, and experimental results to guide high-stakes trade-offs under genuine uncertainty. You will own the investment case, resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs, and influence business unit priorities through the quality of your product strategy — operating within the strategic direction set by the business unit leader while exercising real strategic authority within that frame.
The decisions you make here carry very high irreversibility. Investment memo recommendations, stage-gate calls, and portfolio positioning choices for SIFA materially affect Educate!'s digital strategy for years. This role is for a product leader who understands what it means to hold that kind of accountability and who can build a team culture where evidence quality, learning rigour, and strategic coherence are non-negotiable.
For an experienced product leader who wants to operate with a high degree of ownership, build a strong team, and work in a genuinely mission-driven environment, this role offers the chance to do your most impactful work.
What You’ll Do🌟
Product Strategy
- Own SIFA's full strategic direction from MVP to portfolio backbone — setting the investment stage strategy, building the evidence case for the external RCT, and pressure-testing the CPY model against the 100,000-youth cost point. Ensure every stage-gate decision is grounded in evidence, not momentum, and that SIFA's AI coaching layer is developed with enough rigor to anchor the broader portfolio strategy.
- Own and drive SIFA's product strategy within the strategic direction, problems to solve, and priorities set by the business unit leader — including the investment stage strategy, next-stage decisions, and the investment memo — with full accountability for the quality of evidence, analysis, and recommendations presented to leadership and the Investment Committee
- Maintain active alignment with the business unit leader on product direction, payer strategy, and organizational priorities; surface strategic implications and trade-offs proactively so the business unit leader can shape the frame rather than react to decisions already made
- Lead stage retreats and quarterly planning cycles within the strategic frame of the divisional OKRs and organizational strategy; set stage and quarterly OKRs that reflect both product evidence and organizational priorities; bring a proactive perspective on opportunities and risks beyond the current roadmap
- Own and evolve SIFA's core strategy artifacts — value proposition, theory of change, lean canvas, user persona (including the "Monica" persona), skills map, graduation criteria, product risk register, and product roadmap — and keep them live and decision-relevant across stages
- Own LX strategy for SIFA; ensure SIFA's daily coaching rhythm (evening wrap, morning coach, daytime nudge) is grounded in strategic intent and drives measurable behavior change; hold design partners accountable to agreed quality standards
- Own the gender equity and safeguarding strategies for SIFA in alignment with organizational standards
- Own the CPY narrative and full product strategy budget; lead BvA reviews; present the investment case to the Investment Committee and drive cost efficiency decisions rooted in the product model — calibrating feature investment against the 100,000-youth cost point and 6X ROI target
- Own the product dashboard; ensure it reflects the right current-stage metrics — profit uplift, engagement, credit recovery, micro-action completion, and platform availability — and is actively used in strategic decision-making
- Adapt and apply organisational standards to SIFA's context and contribute to new standards in collaboration with functional leaders
Product Team Management
- Defines and drives the learning agenda across SIFA's MVP-to-scale transition — setting the evidence standards that gate each stage, weighing external research on digital coaching and youth behavior change, and ensuring every go/no-go decision is based on evidence the team has actively designed to collect. The Director owns not just whether evidence is gathered, but whether it is decision-useful and held to a standard that can withstand external scrutiny at the RCT stage.
- Set and own SIFA's learning agenda — defining what must be learned at each stage (retention and habit formation at 1,200 youth; delivery model viability at 5,000; RCT readiness at scale), how evidence will be generated, and how findings feed into stage-gate decisions and the investment memo.
- Proactively widen the evidence base by curating external research on digital coaching, behavior change, and youth livelihoods (in partnership with the evaluation team); deepen the team's interpretation of evaluation results; shape qualitative research to complement quantitative findings.
- Collaborate with the evaluation team to design and oversee SIFA's evaluation plan; ensure pilots, experiments, and research activities — including pre-post profit analyses using the panel method, credit recovery tracking, and engagement monitoring — are executed well and synthesized into clear, actionable findings.
- Own the integrity and decision-usefulness of SIFA's data architecture; integrate external research, evaluation findings, experimental results, user feedback, and operational signals to make high-stakes decisions under uncertainty.
- Own the full suite of SIFA product builds — LX flows, WhatsApp and Webapp journeys, points system, micro-actions, onboarding and activation design, coaching scripts, Business Advisor toolkit, and all field and print materials — to standard and on schedule
- Own the quality control strategy; define how quality is assessed and how findings feed back into design and the learning agenda.
- Validate design decisions against CPY constraints and the delivery model; escalate design trade-offs that exceed cost or delivery constraints.
- Maintain a structured feedback loop with the implementation lead; conduct periodic check-ins to monitor gaps between SIFA's designed coaching experience and what youth actually encounter.
Product Development (Discovery and Experimentation)
- Own the relationships required to take SIFA to the RCT and beyond — including tech and evaluation partners, Business Advisor and CEA networks, community-based recruitment channels (including table banking groups), and prospective payers who will need to see credible evidence before committing to digital coaching at scale. Resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs proactively, and ensure the broader leadership team understands SIFA's portfolio role and is aligned on what the product needs to deliver it.
- Maintain active alignment with the business unit leader — surfacing strategic implications, trade-offs, and product risks in time for them to shape the frame; ensure the Business Unit leader is never surprised by product decisions that have wider organisational consequences
- Resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs proactively; manage upward, downward, and across functions before issues escalate to the business unit leader or MD
- Involve key stakeholders — including youth (the "Monica" persona), Business Advisors, CEAs, impact unit leaders, and functional partners — in setting and validating SIFA's product direction; maintain their understanding of and alignment with the product strategy
- Support the MD or Country Lead in broader leadership initiatives while maintaining clear accountability for SIFA
- Ensure cross-functional workstreams — with impact unit, LX, metrics, tech, and implementation teams — execute coherently and in line with SIFA's product priorities
- Represent SIFA clearly in organisational and leadership forums, planning cycles, and funder conversations; maintain accountability for the product area even as organisational priorities shift.
Stakeholder Management
- Maintain active alignment with the business unit leader — surfacing strategic implications, trade-offs, and product risks in time for them to shape the frame; ensure the BU leader is never surprised by product decisions that have wider organizational consequences
- Manage upward, downward, and across functions proactively; resolve cross-product and cross-functional alignment challenges before they escalate to the business unit leader or MD
- Support the MD in broader leadership initiatives while maintaining clear accountability for the product area
- Ensure cross-functional initiatives and country-wide leadership initiative execute effectively in the entire impact unit
- Build and sustain working relationships with functional leaders across design, training, gender equity, and safeguarding; create structured moments for their input during the development cycle
- Represent the product clearly in organizational and leadership forums; maintain accountability for the product area as priorities evolve
Who You Are 🦸♀️🦸♂️
- You bring 10+ years of experience in product management, product leadership, or closely related roles, with a strong track record of shaping strategic direction across complex or multi-product portfolios — not just executing against existing plans
- You have led products end-to-end, from defining strategic hypotheses and impact models, to building business cases and financial projections, securing executive buy-in and funding approval, and refining strategy based on performance, evidence, and learning outcomes
- You are confident making high-stakes decisions in ambiguous environments, and you take ownership of both the outcomes and the learning that comes from them
- You are deeply experienced in lean startup methodologies, design thinking, and agile product development, and you know how to set high standards while coaching teams to consistently apply them
- You have experience managing and developing senior product practitioners, building cultures grounded in accountability, continuous learning, experimentation, and rigorous product thinking
- You are highly analytical and able to synthesize qualitative insights, quantitative data, financial analysis, and evaluation findings into clear strategic decisions and priorities
- You are skilled at driving alignment across products, teams, and senior stakeholders, including engaging effectively with Managing Directors, leadership teams, funders, and external partners
- You are an excellent communicator who can make complex product strategy, trade-offs, evidence, and impact easy to understand for both technical and non-technical audiences
- You lead with empathy and curiosity, taking time to deeply understand the realities, motivations, and challenges faced by underserved and marginalized communities
- You are passionate about creating transformative opportunities for youth and are energized by environments centered on continuous improvement, innovation, and learning
- You are excited by the challenge of building and scaling digital products for low-income or out-of-school youth in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly through mobile-first channels such as WhatsApp, SMS, and web applications
- You have experience or strong interest in areas such as AI-powered coaching, behaviour change design, livelihoods programming, or evidence-driven product development, including exposure to RCTs, impact measurement, or investor/funder reporting frameworks
- You understand or are eager to learn about micro-entrepreneurship and informal sector realities within East Africa, and you bring a user-centered approach to designing products that create meaningful impact
- You resonate with our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below) and learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here
What We Offer 
- A vibrant, mission-driven environment with a supportive and fun team.
- Flexibility - Fully remote or hybrid work environment (location dependent)
- Competitive salary based on experience.
- Competitive benefits based on location
- Learning & growth opportunities
- This is a Fixed term contract with a possibility of extension based on performance
Application Process: Rolling basis, interviews happening soon!
Terms
- Location is Remote (East Africa preferred)
Additional Content
Position Overview
At Educate!, we create and deliver learning experiences reshaping what youth employment looks like across Africa — building products that reach hundreds of thousands of young people in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. As Product Director for SIFA, you will set strategic direction across a complex, high-ambition digital product, leveraging impact through Product Leads, cross-product coordination, and a high-performing team of designers, engineers, coaching experts, and product associates.
SIFA is Educate!'s AI-powered business coaching product, delivered digitally to help out-of-school youth micro-entrepreneurs make profit visible, strengthen cashflow discipline, and reduce capital trapped in customer credit. It is the product with the clearest ambition to become the digital backbone of the entire Educate! portfolio — scalable, data-generating, and increasingly intelligent with every cohort it runs. The Product Director joining now steps into a product that has moved from concept to MVP, has generated its first real evidence of impact, and is now navigating the most consequential strategic decisions in its lifecycle: how to go from 1,200 youth to 20,000, and then to scale the product to millions of youth.
This role demands more than oversight of a well-run team. You will weigh external research, evaluation findings, and experimental results to guide high-stakes trade-offs under genuine uncertainty. You will own the investment case, resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs, and influence business unit priorities through the quality of your product strategy — operating within the strategic direction set by the business unit leader while exercising real strategic authority within that frame.
The decisions you make here carry very high irreversibility. Investment memo recommendations, stage-gate calls, and portfolio positioning choices for SIFA materially affect Educate!'s digital strategy for years. This role is for a product leader who understands what it means to hold that kind of accountability and who can build a team culture where evidence quality, learning rigour, and strategic coherence are non-negotiable.
For an experienced product leader who wants to operate with a high degree of ownership, build a strong team, and work in a genuinely mission-driven environment, this role offers the chance to do your most impactful work.
What You’ll Do🌟
Product Strategy
- Own SIFA's full strategic direction from MVP to portfolio backbone — setting the investment stage strategy, building the evidence case for the external RCT, and pressure-testing the CPY model against the 100,000-youth cost point. Ensure every stage-gate decision is grounded in evidence, not momentum, and that SIFA's AI coaching layer is developed with enough rigor to anchor the broader portfolio strategy.
- Own and drive SIFA's product strategy within the strategic direction, problems to solve, and priorities set by the business unit leader — including the investment stage strategy, next-stage decisions, and the investment memo — with full accountability for the quality of evidence, analysis, and recommendations presented to leadership and the Investment Committee
- Maintain active alignment with the business unit leader on product direction, payer strategy, and organizational priorities; surface strategic implications and trade-offs proactively so the business unit leader can shape the frame rather than react to decisions already made
- Lead stage retreats and quarterly planning cycles within the strategic frame of the divisional OKRs and organizational strategy; set stage and quarterly OKRs that reflect both product evidence and organizational priorities; bring a proactive perspective on opportunities and risks beyond the current roadmap
- Own and evolve SIFA's core strategy artifacts — value proposition, theory of change, lean canvas, user persona (including the "Monica" persona), skills map, graduation criteria, product risk register, and product roadmap — and keep them live and decision-relevant across stages
- Own LX strategy for SIFA; ensure SIFA's daily coaching rhythm (evening wrap, morning coach, daytime nudge) is grounded in strategic intent and drives measurable behavior change; hold design partners accountable to agreed quality standards
- Own the gender equity and safeguarding strategies for SIFA in alignment with organizational standards
- Own the CPY narrative and full product strategy budget; lead BvA reviews; present the investment case to the Investment Committee and drive cost efficiency decisions rooted in the product model — calibrating feature investment against the 100,000-youth cost point and 6X ROI target
- Own the product dashboard; ensure it reflects the right current-stage metrics — profit uplift, engagement, credit recovery, micro-action completion, and platform availability — and is actively used in strategic decision-making
- Adapt and apply organisational standards to SIFA's context and contribute to new standards in collaboration with functional leaders
Product Team Management
- Defines and drives the learning agenda across SIFA's MVP-to-scale transition — setting the evidence standards that gate each stage, weighing external research on digital coaching and youth behavior change, and ensuring every go/no-go decision is based on evidence the team has actively designed to collect. The Director owns not just whether evidence is gathered, but whether it is decision-useful and held to a standard that can withstand external scrutiny at the RCT stage.
- Set and own SIFA's learning agenda — defining what must be learned at each stage (retention and habit formation at 1,200 youth; delivery model viability at 5,000; RCT readiness at scale), how evidence will be generated, and how findings feed into stage-gate decisions and the investment memo.
- Proactively widen the evidence base by curating external research on digital coaching, behavior change, and youth livelihoods (in partnership with the evaluation team); deepen the team's interpretation of evaluation results; shape qualitative research to complement quantitative findings.
- Collaborate with the evaluation team to design and oversee SIFA's evaluation plan; ensure pilots, experiments, and research activities — including pre-post profit analyses using the panel method, credit recovery tracking, and engagement monitoring — are executed well and synthesized into clear, actionable findings.
- Own the integrity and decision-usefulness of SIFA's data architecture; integrate external research, evaluation findings, experimental results, user feedback, and operational signals to make high-stakes decisions under uncertainty.
- Own the full suite of SIFA product builds — LX flows, WhatsApp and Webapp journeys, points system, micro-actions, onboarding and activation design, coaching scripts, Business Advisor toolkit, and all field and print materials — to standard and on schedule
- Own the quality control strategy; define how quality is assessed and how findings feed back into design and the learning agenda.
- Validate design decisions against CPY constraints and the delivery model; escalate design trade-offs that exceed cost or delivery constraints.
- Maintain a structured feedback loop with the implementation lead; conduct periodic check-ins to monitor gaps between SIFA's designed coaching experience and what youth actually encounter.
Product Development (Discovery and Experimentation)
- Own the relationships required to take SIFA to the RCT and beyond — including tech and evaluation partners, Business Advisor and CEA networks, community-based recruitment channels (including table banking groups), and prospective payers who will need to see credible evidence before committing to digital coaching at scale. Resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs proactively, and ensure the broader leadership team understands SIFA's portfolio role and is aligned on what the product needs to deliver it.
- Maintain active alignment with the business unit leader — surfacing strategic implications, trade-offs, and product risks in time for them to shape the frame; ensure the Business Unit leader is never surprised by product decisions that have wider organisational consequences
- Resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs proactively; manage upward, downward, and across functions before issues escalate to the business unit leader or MD
- Involve key stakeholders — including youth (the "Monica" persona), Business Advisors, CEAs, impact unit leaders, and functional partners — in setting and validating SIFA's product direction; maintain their understanding of and alignment with the product strategy
- Support the MD or Country Lead in broader leadership initiatives while maintaining clear accountability for SIFA
- Ensure cross-functional workstreams — with impact unit, LX, metrics, tech, and implementation teams — execute coherently and in line with SIFA's product priorities
- Represent SIFA clearly in organisational and leadership forums, planning cycles, and funder conversations; maintain accountability for the product area even as organisational priorities shift.
Stakeholder Management
- Maintain active alignment with the business unit leader — surfacing strategic implications, trade-offs, and product risks in time for them to shape the frame; ensure the BU leader is never surprised by product decisions that have wider organizational consequences
- Manage upward, downward, and across functions proactively; resolve cross-product and cross-functional alignment challenges before they escalate to the business unit leader or MD
- Support the MD in broader leadership initiatives while maintaining clear accountability for the product area
- Ensure cross-functional initiatives and country-wide leadership initiative execute effectively in the entire impact unit
- Build and sustain working relationships with functional leaders across design, training, gender equity, and safeguarding; create structured moments for their input during the development cycle
- Represent the product clearly in organizational and leadership forums; maintain accountability for the product area as priorities evolve
Who You Are 🦸♀️🦸♂️
- You bring 10+ years of experience in product management, product leadership, or closely related roles, with a strong track record of shaping strategic direction across complex or multi-product portfolios — not just executing against existing plans
- You have led products end-to-end, from defining strategic hypotheses and impact models, to building business cases and financial projections, securing executive buy-in and funding approval, and refining strategy based on performance, evidence, and learning outcomes
- You are confident making high-stakes decisions in ambiguous environments, and you take ownership of both the outcomes and the learning that comes from them
- You are deeply experienced in lean startup methodologies, design thinking, and agile product development, and you know how to set high standards while coaching teams to consistently apply them
- You have experience managing and developing senior product practitioners, building cultures grounded in accountability, continuous learning, experimentation, and rigorous product thinking
- You are highly analytical and able to synthesize qualitative insights, quantitative data, financial analysis, and evaluation findings into clear strategic decisions and priorities
- You are skilled at driving alignment across products, teams, and senior stakeholders, including engaging effectively with Managing Directors, leadership teams, funders, and external partners
- You are an excellent communicator who can make complex product strategy, trade-offs, evidence, and impact easy to understand for both technical and non-technical audiences
- You lead with empathy and curiosity, taking time to deeply understand the realities, motivations, and challenges faced by underserved and marginalized communities
- You are passionate about creating transformative opportunities for youth and are energized by environments centered on continuous improvement, innovation, and learning
- You are excited by the challenge of building and scaling digital products for low-income or out-of-school youth in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly through mobile-first channels such as WhatsApp, SMS, and web applications
- You have experience or strong interest in areas such as AI-powered coaching, behaviour change design, livelihoods programming, or evidence-driven product development, including exposure to RCTs, impact measurement, or investor/funder reporting frameworks
- You understand or are eager to learn about micro-entrepreneurship and informal sector realities within East Africa, and you bring a user-centered approach to designing products that create meaningful impact
- You resonate with our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below) and learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here
What We Offer
- A vibrant, mission-driven environment with a supportive and fun team.
- Flexibility - Fully remote or hybrid work environment (location dependent)
- Competitive salary based on experience.
- Competitive benefits based on location
- Learning & growth opportunities
- This is a Fixed term contract with a possibility of extension based on performance
Application Process: Rolling basis, interviews happening soon!
Terms
- Location is Remote (East Africa preferred)