Technical Product Manager

Digital Green

Digital Green

IT, Product
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia · Ethiopia
Posted on May 9, 2024

About Digital Green


Digital Green is creating a world where farmers use technology and data to build prosperous communities. We’re utilizing insights gained from our long history of delivering community video-based advisory services and recent developments in large language models to boost the cost-effectiveness of public extension systems with an AI assistant for front-line extension workers. This innovative technology empowers extension agents, especially women, to deliver customized advisory in local languages, helping farmers increase their productivity, incomes, and climate resilience at just a fraction of the cost of conventional solutions.

Summary

As Technical Product Manager you will contribute to the development of customer obsessed products,
delivering value to farmers and evolving company strategy as you do so. You will oversee user
research, product development, and go to market, managing working relationships with internal
and external stakeholders. This is a critical role in which you will have a profound influence on
our global product work and on the impact we deliver at the farm level.
Before reading about the kind of person we are looking for, we want to remind you that very few
people will have all of the skills and experiences listed here. If you think you can build and ship
great, customer-focused agri tech products, regardless of your background, we encourage you
to apply!

Key Responsibilities

As Technical Product Manager you will be reporting to Director, Product Management and be part of the
Global Product organization.

Your specific responsibilities will include the following:

  • You will manage the product development process to research, prototype, build, and ship farmer focused products. You own the process, end to end.
  • You will work closely with the Ministry of Agriculture and other relevant stakeholders to refine how our farmer focused products fit within their existing administrative processes, designing management systems to support our MoA users to benefit from farm level data.
  • You will translate user insights into detailed requirements docs, prototype plans, and product strategy, ensuring thoughtful documentation throughout your work.
  • You will work closely with our product and development leadership teams to ensure roadmaps are clear and agreed upon, milestones are achievable, sprints are planned, and release deadlines are met.
  • You will work with our program and country level teams to ensure that product strategy is aligned with programmatic requirements, that go to market is resourced effectively, and that work plans are aligned.
  • You will conduct user training sessions and travel to user locations to assess product and project performance
  • Perform other duties as assigned

Skills and Experience

  • B.Sc Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering or relevant field of study
  • 5+ years of product design, management and system/ business analysis experience
  • Proven product development experience, having managed teams that have taken products from idea to scale
  • Whether it is Figma or Miro or Jira or Asana or the GSuite - you recognize the power of a well organized comms system and are fluent in at least one, preferably more.
  • Exceptional ability to translate user needs into digital product concepts and to bridge the gap between customers and the engineering/software development team.
  • Fluency in English and business-level proficiency in a regional language.
  • Curiosity and affinity for learning and growth.
(Preferred qualification)
  • Experience working with farmers and farmer organizations or similar rural customers from sectors like health, education, or financing.


To be successful as a member of the Digital Green team, you will also:

  • You are deeply focused on the customer: Over your career, you have led numerous teams through early-stage product design research. You prioritize taking a human centered and inclusive approach to insight gathering, opportunity identification, and early concept testing.
  • You have a bias for action: Talking about what could be possible is easy. Showing what is, informed by user insight and early interaction data is not. You are quick to develop lo-fi prototypes, test demand for a product, and understand the need to ground product conversions in real user data.
  • You are fluent in the product development process: You understand that shipping a great product requires rigorous testing, excellent communication, and a simple to follow process. You have mastered the process, knowing when to speed up and skip a step, when to slow down, rethink, and retest, how to track concept progress from ideation to scale, and how to share your plans, progress, and pivots with all relevant stakeholders.
  • You have learned to trust your gut: While being process driven and grounded in real customer insight but based on your experience of leading product development processes, you know when to take a leap, try a new direction, and create a net new experience for the people we serve.
  • You love to build and ship: You know that setting a rhythm of releases is critical and you are comfortable PM’ing, demonstrating what excellence is, and leading your teams through and end to end release.
  • You build great teams: You recognize that excellence depends upon the psychological safety that we produce and protect within our teams. You focus on mentoring through opportunities, creating clear performance plans, delegating responsibilities, and setting ambitious growth targets for the people you manage.
  • You are kind: You know that kindness is a superpower and you have learned to harness it authentically.


Digital Green is an equal opportunity employer and actively encourages applications from
people of all backgrounds. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to
race, religion, color, sex, national origin, disability or any other status protected under applicable
local laws.