The Opportunity
Living Goods is seeking a Technology and Innovation Manager to join our team in Nairobi. We believe that technology is an increasingly powerful and positive disruptive force in enabling Living Goods to provide effective community health service and drive impact. As the Technology and Innovation Manager, you will lead our Kenya technology team in designing, developing, testing, and rolling out, and supporting technology innovations to support LGK operations. You will provide management leadership for Tech projects though coordination and supervision of the implementation of project activities.
Support product management and product design for all technology products, whether developed in-house at Living Goods or developed by vendors, ensuring effective communication across actors.
Pioneer and implement game-changing innovations while managing Living Goods’ mission critical technologies, including mobile tools, data management systems and software needs.
Responsibilities
Service: Ensuring that all technology service needs are addressed, regardless of type, to comply with any prevailing SLAs and/or reasonable expectations of LGK operations.
Service Improvements: Reviewing progress of Tech service improvement initiatives for LGK, escalating and contributing ideas as appropriate
Risk: Ensuring that LGK Tech responds to all forms of end-to-end country business technology risk needs, including all audit, local regulatory, compliance, obsolescence, virus susceptibility and security needs. Escalate material technology risks to DTI and CTO for attention as appropriate.
Vendors: Manage all local country-based technology vendors to address appropriate country requirements (e.g. local desktop, network and application support vendors). Provide escalation point for local vendor performance/service issues. Responsible to ensure LGK outsourcing relationships are governed and managed on an ongoing basis.
Change Management: In approving system changes, act as the ‘gatekeeper’ of LGKs production environment by assessing impact and level of risk as a result of scheduled changes.
Strategy: Understand and contribute to LGK country strategy. Evolve LGK technology roadmaps, aiming to minimize country-specific development. Provide technology thought leadership and influence LGK strategy with the effective and innovative deployment of technology.
Satisfaction: Gauging business satisfaction with overall Tech service on a regular basis. Feedback to be channeled to DTI and CTO for improvement planning.
Problem/Incident Management: For incidents having significant business impact, communicate/escalation service impact, recovery process, root cause, and mitigating actions, to DTI and CTO
Risk: Ensure that country exposure to each form of technology risk is understood and managed.
Capacity Planning & Tech HR: Work with LGK leadership to predict business volumes for business technology capacity planning. Manage LGK technology team, cultivating the growth of existing talent and bringing in new skills and experience where necessary.
Governance: Provide LGK technology governance, including leading monthly/quarterly technology/LGK management sessions to address service, risk, projects, innovation and quality, and communicate initiatives and improvements
Projects: Establish and implement appropriate IT project management plan and infrastructure and undertake continuous coordination and monitoring of the project activities to assess progress against planned delivery.
Oversee development of innovative mobile marketing tools and platforms, e.g. data collection, training support, field sales force management, mobile money, customer financing, incentive systems, smart phone and tablet apps, GIS etc.
Support management of all Living Goods management information systems.
Qualifications
University degree required, preference to candidates with Information Technology, Computer Science, Software Engineering or Business degrees.
5+ years experience leading or implementing technology strategy for organizations with large teams, with exposure to: mobile-based systems, ERP, accounting systems, and CRMs.
At least 3 years experience managing multi-stakeholder IT projects or programs.
Experience leading and managing software application development for web or mobile platforms as well as developing database systems.
Very strong project management skills, comfortable with managing complex project in one or more: SQL, PHP, Python, JavaScript, web-development and health systems development.
Compensation
A competitive salary and benefits package commensurate with experience including health insurance and bonus opportunity. The opportunity to be your best while making lives better for those in need.
What is Living Goods?
Living Goods supports networks of ‘Avon-like’ micro-entrepreneurs who go door-to-door teaching families how to improve their health and wealth while selling affordable, high- impact products like basic medicines, fortified foods, water filters, clean cook stoves, and solar lights. Living Goods seeks nothing less than a disruptive reinvention of distribution in the developing world, through networks of franchised micro-entrepreneurs who leverage Living Goods’ brand, buying power and mobile marketing tools to deliver vital products at accessible prices to the people who need them most. By combining the best practices from the worlds of micro-enterprise, franchising and public health, Living Goods is creating a fully sustainable system to improve the health, and wealth, of the poor.
Living Goods has been featured in The New York Times, NBC News, The Economist, and The Huffington Post. Check out these articles and more on our press page.
More Information
- Job City Nairobi
