Product Director — SIFA

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Full-time Expires In -3 weeks Kampala Duty Station - Kampala, Uganda Bachelor's Degree 1 year experience Education NGO Management

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Job Details

Educate! prepares youth in Africa to learn, earn and thrive in today's economy. By 2035, Africa will contribute more young people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. Educate! is a team of over 300 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors, backed by foundations including Imaginable Futures, Livelihood Impact Fund, Jack Dorsey's #startsmall, CIFF and Echidna Giving, winner of a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and 2015 WISE Award.

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. The product has moved from concept to MVP, generated its first real evidence of impact with 1,200 youth, and is now navigating the transition to 20,000 and then to millions at scale.

The Product Director for SIFA will set strategic direction across the 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. The role weighs external research, evaluation findings, and experimental results to guide high-stakes trade-offs under genuine uncertainty, owns the investment case, resolves cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs, and influences business unit priorities through the quality of product strategy — operating within strategic direction set by the business unit leader while exercising real strategic authority.

Expected Impact: MVP v4 completes with a clear go/iterate/pause recommendation for the 5,000-youth pilot grounded in profit uplift, engagement, credit recovery, delivery model viability and operational readiness; CPY model fully costed and pressure-tested against the 100,000-youth cost point with ROI narrative to Investment Committee; SIFA data architecture live and used in quarterly OKR reviews; By end 2027 serve 20,000 enrolled users; By 2028 reach 2 million youth backed by external RCT confirming 30% income gain and minimum 6X 3-year income ROI at 100,000-youth cost point; By 2029 operate as evidence-backed digital backbone of Educate!'s portfolio.

Duty station: Kampala, Uganda. Employment type: Full-time. Work hours: 8. Base salary: Not disclosed.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

Set strategic direction across SIFA digital product and coordinate through Product Leads and cross-product coordination.
Lead a high-performing team of designers, engineers, coaching experts, and product associates.
Weigh external research, evaluation findings, and experimental results to guide high-stakes trade-offs under uncertainty.
Own the investment case, stage-gate calls, and portfolio positioning choices for SIFA.
Resolve cross-product and cross-functional trade-offs and influence business unit priorities through product strategy.
Ensure SIFA's data architecture is live, decision-useful, and actively used in quarterly OKR reviews with dashboard reflecting profit uplift, engagement, credit recovery, micro-action completion, and platform availability.
Build a team culture where evidence quality, learning rigour, and strategic coherence are non-negotiable.
Deliver scale pathway from 1,200 to 20,000 youth and to 2 million youth with measurable business performance improvements.

Qualifications, Skills and Requirements

Bachelor's degree required.
At least 1 year (12 months) of experience stated; role suits experienced product leader with high ownership and ability to hold accountability for irreversible investment decisions.
Experience in product leadership, strategic planning, and team building preferred.
Strong evidence-driven decision making, learning rigour, and strategic coherence.
Passion for mission-driven work and youth employment; valuing diversity, women and individuals from all backgrounds encouraged to apply.