Product Strategist, Tanzania

Position Overview

Educate! is a non-profit social enterprise looking for a dynamic Strategist to shape the future of secondary education in Tanzania through Teacher Continuous Professional Development (TCPD). As our TCPD Strategist, you will drive meaningful change by designing a product that equips teachers and school leaders with the skills to transform their classrooms and prepare students for the workforce.

In this role, you’ll be at the heart of redefining education, working cross-functionally with our program delivery, field operations, government advocacy, and revenue teams. Together, you’ll set the vision, chart the roadmap, and adapt our TCPD program to Tanzania's unique context, creating sustainable behavior change in educators. Your mission? To amplify the impact of project-based learning (PBL) and project-based assessments (PBA), empowering students to lead their community projects and start small businesses. Join us to help build an education system that prepares young people for real-world success! 

The right person for this role will:

● User-Centered Design Expertise: Skilled in experimentation, human-centered design, or product development, with a focus on user needs and iterative testing.

● Passionate About Education and Youth Impact: Dedicated to fostering sustainable change in secondary education, preferably with experience in government or youth programs.

● Agile and Adaptable Leadership: Strong at managing teams and navigating changes with organizational skill, adaptability, and resilience in the face of new challenges.

● Proactive Problem-Solver: Anticipates challenges in product development and designs creative, adaptive solutions as needs evolve. 

About Educate!

What if there was a way to measurably change the trajectory of the lives of youth across Africa? Since its launch in 2009, Educate! has worked to do just this, delivering outsized impacts at scale and disproportionately low cost, through a product-led approach to youth development. As a disruptive, not-for-profit, social enterprise, our team leverages an obsession with evidence and entrepreneurial drive to tackle one of our planet's greatest challenges - unlocking the potential of its youngest continent.

Educate!’s core model combines training in key skills with access to practical experience starting a business and mentorship, a formula that has been validated by several independent evaluations. This model is distributed through products targeting two lead channels. First, Educate! works with governments to help reform education systems at scale through policy change, teacher behavior change, and tech-enabled products targeting systems-level sustainability, while also working directly with select schools. Second, Educate! builds employment-focused boot camps and business support services targeting out-of-school youth left out of the education system. To date, more than 200,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted by this model across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way Educate! has become the largest youth skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations, and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF, and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we aim to scale our annual reach by 4x and measurably impact over 400,000 new youth. 

Performance Objectives

Product Development Strategy:

• Learning Agenda and Strategy Execution: Define and lead a clear learning agenda focused on rapid testing and validation of TCPD’s product features to meet objectives, especially those centered on teacher development.
• Vision Alignment and Communication: Work closely with the Principal Product Strategist to translate the product vision into actionable steps for the product team, ensuring alignment and clarity for all members on implementation pathways.
• Collaborative Insights Gathering: Collaborate with the performance metrics team to gather meaningful user feedback on product user challenges and preferences, as well as with the design specialist to ensure all testing and results align with TCPD’s goals.

 Product Development Oversight:

• Sprint and Project Management Lead: Oversee sprint planning, track ongoing progress, and facilitate retrospectives to evaluate outcomes. Keep team members aligned on milestones and timeframes.
• Data and Performance Analyst: Deliver data-driven insights to refine development strategies, identify pain points, and adjust plans to overcome challenges. Collaborate with the team to use this feedback to iterate on the product.
• Feedback and review of the learning and designer’s work: Conduct reviews of the Learning and Designers’ work to ensure alignment with the broader product strategy, vision, and quality standards.
•  Testing and Validation: Test and validate product features and usability to ensure each release meets functional requirements and enhances the user experience for the end users (like teachers, students, education officials, and the related)

Liaison Between Teams:

• Cross-functional communications Coordinator:  Facilitates seamless communication between product development, program delivery, advocacy, and field operations by organizing regular sync-ups, documenting meetings, and tracking action items to ensure follow-through across teams. 
• Strategy Alignment Facilitator: Lead internal strategic alignment workshops and retreats, bringing teams together to discuss goals, shared objectives, and potential barriers, ensuring all teams are on the same page with the product’s mission and vision. 
• Feedback Integration Specialist:  Collects and synthesizes feedback from various teams, particularly field operations and program delivery, and delivers this information back to the product development team to inform ongoing improvements and adaptations. 
• Knowledge Sharing and Learning Lead:  Develops and manages a process for ongoing knowledge sharing across teams, helping to distribute learnings from each function (e.g., advocacy insights or field operations data) and fostering an environment of continuous improvement and alignment.

Cost Model Oversight:

• Budgeting and Financial Planning Lead:  Collaborate with the finance team to create and maintain detailed product budgets that align with the program's financial objectives. This includes ensuring that all cost models—especially the cost-per-youth (CPY) benchmarks—are accurate. Product Cost Optimization: Identify opportunities to reduce costs without compromising on quality or impact. This role is responsible for continuously reviewing and refining the product's cost model to ensure that resources are used efficiently. It includes planning, implementing cost-saving initiatives, and ensuring the product development stays within budget while maximizing value.
•  Cost and Resource Planning Coordinator:  Work closely with product strategists, designers, and the program delivery team to understand the resource and budgetary needs for product testing, development, and quality assurance. This role will also be responsible for ensuring that the planned product activities align with financial resources, ensuring that all necessary activities are accounted for in the budget (including field visits, data collection, and feedback loops). 

Qualifications

• Proven project management experience, particularly in product development and agile methodologies.
• Strong organizational and communication skills, especially in working with government agencies and aligning program goals with national ambitions.
• Ability to manage multiple teams and coordinate technical and strategic aspects.
• Experience in the Tanzanian education sector or government relations is a plus.
• This position is only open to Tanzanian Nationals. Fluency in Swahili and English is preferred.

 Terms

• The location is in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
• Compensation will be competitive and based on experience.
• Health insurance will be included.
• The position reports to the principal Strategist
• This is a one-year contract position with a possibility of extension. 

What Is Educate! About? 

We’re ambitious. Are you?  Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

1. We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We never forget that Educate! exists to impact youth. We are purpose-driven. We obsess over impact daily and if it doesn’t lead to impact, we want nothing to do with it. We prioritize interacting with and listening to youth. We design and manage the organization to ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences that youth value.

2. We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results. When we know what needs to be done, we do it. We don’t wait to be asked and we don’t stop at what is asked of us. We look for solutions as much as we identify problems.

3. We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded. We know there is always another way and we are excited to learn about it. We continuously look for resources of all kinds from multiple disciplines. We try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.

 4. We are One Team, Many Views - We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization's mission and goals over team or individual goals.

 5. We have the Startup Mindset - We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down.

 Every person at Educate! from interns to the executive director is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds, and life experiences to join our diverse team.

Safeguarding and Child Protection: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection, and screening. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.