Product Manager at Interswitch Group

Interswitch is an Africa-focused integrated digital payments and commerce company that facilitates the electronic circulation of money as well as the exchange of value between individuals and organisations on a timely and consistent basis. We started operations in 2002 as a transaction switching and electronic payments processing, and have progressively evolved into an integrated payment services company, building and managing payment infrastructure as well as delivering innovative payment products and transactional services throughout the African continent. At Interswitch, we offer unique career opportunities for individuals capable of playing key roles and adding value in an innovative and fun environment.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Product Manager

Location: Lagos 
Job type: Permanent
Department: Purepay - Transaction Switching & Payment Processing

Job Description

• Responsible for driving the short- and long-term strategy for allocated products, considering the strategic objectives of the business and both customer and market requirements to enable the continued growth of Interswitch.
• Work cross functionally to guide product from conception to launch by focusing on analysing, positioning, promoting, and tailoring solutions to users, connecting the technical and financial worlds, and breaking down complex problems into steps that drive product development at speed.

Responsibilities
Leadership and Direction:

• Communicate actions needed to implement the Product Management strategy and business plan within the team
• Assume end-to-end responsibility for the strategic value, usability and performance of products within the assigned area
• Design, build, and nurture products to elevate Interswitch’s brand and grow its businesses by amplifying human connections, relationships and experiences
• Identify return on investment and business value and lead prioritisation of backlog and create and maintain user personas

Product Development and Management:

• Take responsibility for all aspects of a life cycle of a product or set of products, including long- and short-term development and marketing
• Stay abreast of trends in the marketplace to ensure the product's competitive position
• Act as the product evangelist owning features and experiments end-to-end, including writing product specifications, driving cross-functional execution, making thoughtful product decisions along the way and sharing consistently knowledge, experience, insights and results throughout Interswitch
• Stay abreast of new technology capabilities, competitive landscape, industry trends, and best practices and leverage knowledge in contribution to product solutions to ensure the product's competitive position
• Recommend and plan innovative products and features within the assigned area
• Workforce Planning, Performance Management and Talent Optimisation
• Prepare budget, obtain approval, execute, control, evaluate and report budget variances
• Manage and drive the performance of direct reports, set appropriate performance objectives for direct reports or project / account team members, hold them accountable for achieving these and take appropriate corrective action where necessary to ensure achievement of team / personal objectives
• Motivate and support the growth of team, using equitable approaches to performance management and development that may be differentiated to support each employee's unique needs and preferences in order to bring out their best and meet business needs
• Provide constructive feedback to team on performance, provide training, coaching and mentoring and identify talent for pivotal roles from a succession management standpoint

Product Training:

• Identify product training needs and develop, design, and evaluate content for product training courses in specific functional areas to fill gaps in established programmes.
• Run complex and customised product training courses to improve employee performance within specific functional area.
• Lead teams that deliver product / service information and adhere to predefined messaging / positioning of product / service.

Product Scope Definition, Planning and Execution:

• Contribute to the development of annual and longer-term business plans and forecast performance against business key performance indicators
• Develop business cases for key activities or projects and estimate the financial and human resources required to deliver performance targets
• Create and maintain product roadmap in collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders, scope and prioritise projects into the roadmap
• Drive alignment on business goals, and define user experience objectives, target KPIs, and measurement plans to ascertain completion within agreed scope, budget and timeframe.
• Promote Customer Focus, Stakeholder Engagement and Management
• Contribute to stakeholder engagement through identifying stakeholders, finding out their needs / issues / concern and reacting to these by arranging meetings and events and drafting supporting materials to promote understanding and commitment.
• Plan and deliver stakeholder engagement activities to develop effective project working relationships and to ensure that stakeholder needs and concerns are identified and met.
• Connect regularly with customers, partners and users their understand their needs.
• Partner with Marketing and Sales team to capture market dynamics, develop and coordinate go-to-market plan, and work to meet growth targets while ascertaining compliance with domestic and international policies and regulations
• Provide support to Sales and Business Development teams in their engagements with customers regarding the product to enable the increased sale of the product
• Performance Improvement through Business Intelligence.
• Create basic machine learning algorithms and support creation of more complex algorithms that identify patterns in structured data.
• Partner with different business stakeholders and internal clients to ensure the collection of data in accordance with model standards.
• Conduct specific analyses and leverage both user research and product insights to make product and technical decisions across a complex system that balances user priorities, efficiency needs, and product capability.
• Research and analyse data from digital product / service performance, customer behaviour, and market trends to identify opportunities for product / service improvement.
• Make priority recommendations and provide actionable feedback to engineering team where appropriate.

Requirements

• University First Degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Business or Finance related field.
• At least 8 years experience in Product Management roles ideally within reputable financial institutions or the payments industry.
• At least 3 years' experience of supervising and directing people and other resources to achieve specific end results within limited timeframes.
• Market Research, Analysis, Review and Reporting skills.
• Commercial and Financial acumen.
• Stakeholder management skills.
• Business Insight.
• Planning and Organizing skills.

Application Closing Date
31st August, 2022.