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Job Title:   Product Associate – EXP & EBA In-School

Organisation: Educate!

Duty Station:  Kampala, Uganda

About the Company:

Educate! prepares youth in Africa with the skills to succeed in today’s economy. We tackle youth unemployment by partnering with schools and governments to reform what schools teach and how they teach it, so that students in Africa have the skills to attain further education, overcome gender inequities, start businesses, get jobs and drive development in their communities. Our model is delivered through practically-trained teachers and youth mentors. Educate!’s goal is to make this practical, skills-based model part of national education systems.

Job Summary:  At Educate!, the Product Associate will play a crucial role in driving product experimentation, scalability, and continuous improvement to meet the needs of Africa’s youth. This role combines hands-on experimentation, ensuring that all product development efforts align with Educate!’s long-term mission of transforming education for millions of youth across Africa. The successful candidate will collaborate with cross-functional teams to lead user-centered validations, develop frameworks for experimentation, and optimize product development processes.

The Product Associate will be responsible for ensuring that our products are scalable and replicable, with a focus on using data-driven insights to guide decisions and inform product improvements. By supporting product leaders in building high-impact, user-driven products, this role is central to Educate!’s mission of creating educational solutions that drive meaningful change.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

The role involves supporting day-to-day product operational tasks while supporting strategic initiatives within the impact unit team. Focused on optimizing product processes and enabling the team to work efficiently, ensuring smooth scaling and continuous improvement.

Experimentation & Scalability

• Design and Implement Scalable Experiments: Lead the execution of experiments within the product team to validate hypotheses and improve the user experience, ensuring alignment with product goals.
• Utilize the Sandbox Process: Drive the use of the sandbox environment within the team to prototype, test, and validate product features in a controlled, low-risk setting.
• Define Metrics and KPIs: Collaborate with the product team to establish clear metrics and KPIs for each experiment, ensuring they align with both immediate and long-term product objectives.
• Document and Share Insights: Maintain comprehensive documentation of experiment outcomes and share key learnings within the team to continuously optimize future experimentation efforts.

User-Centered Validation

• Lead User Research: Conduct usability testing, user interviews, and other research efforts to validate product assumptions and gain insights into user needs.
• Synthesize Feedback: Analyze user feedback and data to provide actionable insights that inform product improvements.
• Integrate Insights Continuously: Ensure that user insights are regularly incorporated into the product development process to drive ongoing refinement.
• Advocate for Users: Champion user-centered design solutions in product discussions and iterations to ensure the product aligns with user needs.

Frameworks & Tools for Experimentation

• Co-Create Experimentation Frameworks: Collaborate with the product team to adapt and apply standardized experimentation frameworks (e.g., A/B testing, multivariate testing, and rapid prototyping) to fit the specific needs of the product.
• Provide Tools and Resources: Leverage the tools, resources, and processes rolled out by the product operations function to streamline experimentation within the product team.
• Enhance Methodologies: Work with the product team to continuously assess and refine experimentation methodologies, ensuring they are aligned with best practices and the product’s unique requirements.
• Support Team Training: Co-create training and resources with the product operations function to empower the product team in utilizing experimentation frameworks effectively for product development.

Driving Data-Driven Insights and Operationalizing Frontline Feedback

• Monitor KPIs and Provide Actionable Insights: Support the tracking and analysis of key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess product efficiency, quality, and impact, ensuring actionable insights are delivered to guide continuous improvement within the product team.
• Collaborate on Feedback Integration: Work with the product team to establish efficient processes for transforming frontline feedback into actionable backlog items, ensuring this feedback is prioritized and integrated into future product iterations.
• Support Feature Prioritization: Assist in prioritizing and implementing frontline-driven features, collaborating with the team to streamline the feedback loop and reduce the cycle time from insight capture to feature release.
• Facilitate Continuous Improvement: Participate in regular retrospectives and reviews to optimize the integration of feedback into product development, helping to refine experimentation practices and ensure that product improvements are consistently aligned with user needs.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• Experience: 1-2 years in product management, operations, or related fields with a focus on experimentation and user-centered design.
• Skills: Analytical mindset, strong communication abilities, and a solid understanding of experimentation tools and methodologies.
• Attributes: Collaborative, data-driven, and proactive, with a passion for driving user-focused product improvements.
• Dynamic experience is highly preferred, and can operate well in complex and fast-changing environments.
• The ideal candidate has worked in a very early-stage startup trying to achieve product-market fit or led a new product or program within a larger organization.
• Experience working with diverse stakeholders and managing many priorities
• Passion for Educate!’s mission is a must, but past work in education or youth development is not required. We value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from people with various backgrounds. Background working with youth in the informal sector would be an asset.
• Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here

The ideal candidate will need to be able to:

• Customer-Centric Approach: Bring a deep understanding of user needs, leveraging feedback and insights to continuously refine product offerings. They should prioritize user-centered design principles and ensure products align with the diverse needs of the end users.
• Collaborative and Team-Oriented: This role requires seamless collaboration with product managers, designers, programs implementation and other key stakeholders. The candidate must excel in fostering a positive, cross-functional work environment and driving alignment across teams.
• Clear Communication: Strong written and verbal communication skills are essential. The candidate must effectively translate complex product ideas and insights into actionable plans for both technical and non-technical teams.
• Problem-Solving & Innovation: The ideal candidate should demonstrate a proactive problem-solving mindset, addressing challenges creatively while maintaining a strong focus on product priorities. They must be skilled at identifying obstacles and devising solutions that ensure efficient product iterations.
• Analytical and Data-Driven: The candidate should possess an analytical mindset, comfortable with interpreting data to derive actionable insights. Familiarity with data analytics tools and experimentation methodologies is crucial for informed decision-making.

How to Apply:

All candidates should apply online at the link below.

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