Position Title: Product Manager - Payments/ Product & System Development
Job Location: Nairobi
Reporting to: Head of Product

What you will do:

As a Product Manager - Payments (PM), your role will be crucial in identifying, developing, and nurturing strategic alliances with our payments partners to drive growth and innovation for Watu. This position requires a strong technical and engineering background, a deep understanding of our industry, excellent relationship-building skills, and the ability to negotiate and close deals to facilitate fast, efficient and valuable payment integrations that create value for Watu and our partners. Your primary responsibility will be to identify, cultivate, and manage partnerships with external entities, such as fintechs, payment aggregators, mobile operators, and financial service providers among other strategic payment partners. Additionally, you will collaborate closely with various internal teams, including product and system development to ensure that payment solutions are effectively integrated and managed.

The successful candidate will have a strong technical record, a proven track record of developing and managing successful partnerships, a strategic mindset, a clear understanding of external API-driven product development, and the ability to think creatively to identify new opportunities. This key role will significantly impact our company's growth and success.

Responsibilities:

• Manage payment API integration projects across all key markets and monitor performance and key task delivery timelines.
• Collaborate with existing payment partners to solve actual issues.
• Maintain clear documentation of access credentials, implementation details, and troubleshooting guidelines of partner APIs that drive product features including payment processing partners, servicing channel partners (eg, WhatsApp, Infobib etc), and any other external parties that drive core product features.
• Create and maintain Watu’s strategic payment partnerships engagement framework - including partner categories and tiers, prioritization, and engagement strategies with a focus on broad reach, efficient, low-cost payment solutions.
• Lead negotiations with senior stakeholders at potential partners - up to C-level - to establish mutually beneficial agreements, contracts, and collaboration frameworks.
• Structure complex agreements that include custom commercials, technical integrations, data protection and privacy.
• Cultivate and maintain strong relationships with existing partners, serving as the primary point of contact.
• Define SLAs and performance standards for our partners and drive efforts to implement and track commitments.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to develop and execute strategic plans that leverage payment partnerships to drive revenue growth, expand market reach, or enhance product offerings.
• Coordinate with legal and finance teams to finalize contracts and agreements with partners.

What we are looking for:

Education level: 

• Bachelor’s degree (Computer science degree preferred) from an accredited institution or equivalent experience with demonstrated proficiency

Experience: 

• Proven experience, 5+ years, in the fintech, telco or equivalent with senior-level engagement and relationship building.
• A minimum of 5 years’ management experience, having worked across technical, commercial, and customer-facing environments within the technology industry - particularly telcos and fintech.
• Demonstrated experience in product management, product marketing, partnership management, business development, or related roles with a track record of successfully establishing strategic alliances.

Technical skills: 

• Fintech, mobile wallets and mobile operator APIs
• Excellent product and technical instincts about mobile applications, web technologies and product development
• Experience using Jira, Confluence and other Atlassian tools for product management and familiarity with other tools such as Jira, Trello, Miro etc
• Ability to measure and analyze key performance indicators
• Understanding of the software development cycle and familiarity with Agile Principles
• Exceptional negotiation and contract management skills, with the ability to create win-win scenarios in complex partnerships.
• Strong strategic thinking abilities, including the capacity to analyze market trends, competitive landscapes, and potential opportunities for collaboration.

Behavioral skills: 

• You demonstrate exceptional stakeholder management and relationship-building skills, including effectively managing expectations and obtaining agreement on key objectives.
• Ability to quickly strike a rapport with strangers and build meaningful and lasting business relationships
• Proven track record of integrity while managing business transactions
• Embraces, leads and embeds change
• Must actively demonstrate the values of Watu; Strong Ethics and Standards.
• Motivates, coaches and develops the team
• Excellent multi-tasking skills
• Problem-solving, Creative and Critical thinking skills
• Goal orientation, ability to focus and get things done in fuzzy environments
• Great interpersonal, communication and presentation skills

Equal Opportunity Statement

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity in our workplace.
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for this position without regard to age, gender, disability, religion, or any other status protected under the Employment Act (Kenya).

All personal information provided will be handled in accordance with the Kenya Data Protection Act, 2019 and used solely for recruitment purposes.