Overview

Ushahidi is looking for a Senior Product Manager to lead its core platform. You’d work closely with a team of UX and UI designers, engineers, community managers, and sales staff to chart the direction of the product using data-driven hypothesis and testing.

We need someone who can work end-to-end through the entire product development process, from UX discovery, problem definition, information architecture, sprint and scrum planning, roadmap management, client management, and product marketing. We understand that your skillset will be stronger in some areas and weaker in others, but you need to contribute at every step of the product design and delivery process. This is a remote position.

We strongly encourage people from traditionally underrepresented populations in tech – such as women, People of Color, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people, etc – to apply!

REQUIREMENTS

Responsibilities of this Role

  • Develop product strategy and direction to maintain relevance and value for users in a competitive marketplace.
  • Ultimately be responsible for the prioritization of features, bugs, backlog, and product direction.
  • Collaborate with product, engineering, and sales staff to scope, prototype, design, build, user test, and release software and communication material to users.
  • Manage the product roadmap for solving users’ problems from concept to implementation.
  • Contribute to and drive the product’s financial success.
  • Manage Ushahidi’s product and business metrics systems and tools to influence product roadmap and communicate them regularly to the team.
  • Manage engineering timelines and stakeholder expectations to ensure requirements are delivered on time.
  • Work with designers and community managers to do continuous UX testing and translate them into user stories and then into well scoped features.
  • Manage QA of product before product update releases.
  • Plan product releases, including QA, engineering support, and marketing content.
  • Contribute to the marketing and sales content of the product including campaign messaging, case studies, and website messaging.
  • Support account managers of enterprise clients to manage product customizations.
  • Ability to travel, with expectation of significant travel between key cities where our clients are based such as Washington DC, NYC, and a number of trips annually to Europe and Africa.

We understand that your skillset will be stronger in some areas and weaker in others, but you will need to contribute at every step of the product design and delivery process

What we are looking for in this role

This is a hard job. We are a mission-driven social enterprise that makes open source software for the humanitarian, government, and international development industries to improve crisis response, election monitoring, citizen engagement, and human rights reporting. We have also had clients in the following markets: media, insurance, service delivery, municipalities, and private sector marketing. We sell software as a service and value added service to enterprise clients in the humanitarian and development sectors. We have a goal of increasing our earned revenue to make the product financially profitable in the next 18 months. In this role you need to grow our earned revenue while staying committed to our mission. This job is for someone who likes a challenge.

Your experience should include:

  • At least 7+ years experience in software product management ideally for the international development, humanitarian, or public sector.
  • Proven experience building a software as a service product that serves a range of users, from free to enterprise level.
  • Proven experience managing mixed-discipline product teams to deliver software and being highly detail-oriented
  • Proven experience using and managing data and metrics systems to chart product development.
  • Proven experience doing user research and building products based on user needs.
  • Proven experience testing hypotheses to draw insights and make decisions.
  • Proven experience making technical recommendations throughout the web and mobile software stack
  • Preferred if you have a technical background with experience in HTML/CSS/Saas/Angular/React/PHP
  • Benefit if you have experience building open source software with a services business model.
  • Benefit if you have experience working with diverse, remote teams.
  • Benefit if you have experience building products that serve users who exist at the edge of the internet.

What we look for in all our employees

  • People who like working on hard problems.
  • Willingness to help out where you’re needed: responding to coworkers, helping community members in need, taking on a project that needs being done, researching best practices from other organizations and helping implement them here.
  • Drive for working with and supporting our clients and customers.
  • Drive for international development and social justice.
  • Eagerness to take feedback, grow and further your skills.
  • A passion for technology.
  • A desire to build things that aim to help those in need.
  • Ability to communicate effectively across cultures and time zones.

Why You Might Be A Good Fit

  • Independence. Ushahidi operates under a de facto system of commander’s intent in a largely remote working environment. That is, the team agrees upon goals and strategies, but the day to day of how it is accomplished is left largely up to each employee. Nobody will be leaning over your shoulder telling you what to do everyday and when to do it, we expect you to be able to do that yourself.
  • Intrinsically motivated. Ushahidi came from Nairobi, but team members work all around the world. If you need to come into an office and talk to your boss everyday to stay motivated, this job is not for you. If all you need is a crazy cool project, an awesome group of people online 24/7, wifi, and coffee (or tea), then you’ll fit right in.
  • Ability to get things done and hit metrics. Being remote and a group of self-driven people we don’t care how many hours you worked or how many meetings you went to, we all set tangible goals that move the needle each quarter and measure our success on those goals.

Why You Might Not Be A Good Fit

  • We pay competitively at Ushahidi using a pay calculator that is based on role, experience, location, and time at the company; however, keep in mind that we are still a mission driven non-profit and we recognize we do not pay what our for-profit software company friends pay. We believe that quality of life is as valuable as the dollar.
  • You are not able to get on phone calls at odd hours. The reality of being a remote organization is that we have lots of flexibility in our hours, but we have to also get on early morning or evening calls to accommodate time zones. Physics, sometimes it’s a pain.
  • You only want to wear one hat. Ushahidi is growing (30+ employees) but we take on the goals of much larger organizations. In practice this means that all Ushahidians end up wearing multiple hats and working on multiple projects. If that excites you, great. If you are set on never venturing out of your job title, you’re going to get frustrated fast.
  • You want to be in an office surrounded by colleagues. You will most likely be operating on your own most of the time, and in this role spending a lot of time on calls with the team, talking to users, or joining a client call, you will experience your colleagues through a video-chat the majority of the time.

BENEFITS

Why Working At Ushahidi Is Awesome

  • We don’t care when you work. There are no “business hours” at Ushahidi, we are milestone based, not a sit-in-your-chair from 9 to 5 company. Many staff have children and work around their schedules, all that matters is that you hit your milestones.
  • Ushahidi team members currently live all over the world: from Japan and New Zealand, to Nairobi and San Francisco, making this a global company while simultaneously small enough to know everyone.
  • Yearly company retreat in pretty incredible places such as the Kenyan Coast, a ranch in Austin, or the Italian Alps. We work remote, but once a year we get the whole company together in one physical location to plan for the year ahead, as well as hang out and enjoy each others company.
  • We aim to hire great people who support our open and diverse culture.
  • Quality of life. Ushahidi attracts workaholics, so we all work hard to make sure everyone has a work-life balance.
  • Other benefits: Take what you want vacation policy (Minimum 25 days a year), parental leave
  • Healthcare insurance and other HR insurance package.
  • Co-working space stipend.
  • Interesting and engaging international travel.