Senior Product Manager (AI-Native) at Umba in Nairobi, Kenya

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    Senior Product Manager (AI-Native)

    UmbaNairobi, Kenya

    Posted

    12 hours ago

    Apply by

    23 Sept

    Full Time
    On Site
    Senior
    ICT & Telecommunications
    Data, Analytics & AI

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    Job Description

    We are hiring a Senior Product Manager to own product strategy and execution for financial technology products end to end: discovery, spec, delivery, launch, and the metric that follows. You will work across the product lines we operate today and the ones we stand up next, and you will partner with senior leadership on where the next bet goes. This is not a traditional product role. We operate in an AI-native environment. The team uses Claude Code, Claude Design, Codex, and similar tools to spec, prototype, and ship. The Senior PM is expected to write product and technical specifications that AI agents can execute against, drive delivery end to end, ship small PRs directly when it is faster than handing off, coordinate the stakeholders that turn a product into a business, and own the outcomes those products generate. The bar is moving 10x faster without sacrificing quality. The role spans two domains. Own the roadmap across your product lines, which may include credit and lending, savings and deposits, payments and foreign exchange, and new products in development. Run customer discovery directly with target segments, from individual borrowers and savers to SMEs, business operators, and freelancers. Size opportunities, instrument funnels, and validate hypotheses against production data. You do not wait for an analyst. Make prioritisation calls across very different product lines a credit policy tweak vs. a new payments corridor vs. a deposit campaign and defend them with numbers. Track competitor moves in the markets you operate in and translate them into product decisions. Write product and technical specifications that engineers and AI coding agents can implement directly. Tight, unambiguous, testable. Prototype in Claude Design to validate concepts before committing engineering time. Code and ship small PRs yourself with Claude Code when it is faster than handing off. PMs here live in the codebase. Drive delivery end to end. Own scope, timeline, and quality. Run delivery in Linear, our product and project management surface. Run the cadence with Engineering: standups, sprint reviews, unblocking, bug triage, and trade-off calls when things slip. Coordinate across stakeholders: leadership, Engineering, Data, Credit, Operations, Risk, Compliance, and Marketing. Align scope, ship dates, and trade-offs across teams that have different incentives. Own outcomes, not output. Tie every initiative to a revenue, growth, or risk metric. Track it post-launch and iterate until the metric moves. Review AI-generated implementations, prototypes, and analyses for correctness, edge cases, and business fit. Build feedback loops: customer signal, spec, AI-assisted build, metric, next spec. Compress the cycle. Own launch comms and internal enablement.

    Key Responsibilities

    • Own the roadmap across your product lines, which may include credit and lending, savings and deposits, payments and foreign exchange, and new products in development.
    • Run customer discovery directly with target segments, from individual borrowers and savers to SMEs, business operators, and freelancers.
    • Size opportunities, instrument funnels, and validate hypotheses against production data. You do not wait for an analyst.
    • Make prioritisation calls across very different product lines a credit policy tweak vs. a new payments corridor vs. a deposit campaign and defend them with numbers.
    • Track competitor moves in the markets you operate in and translate them into product decisions.
    • Write product and technical specifications that engineers and AI coding agents can implement directly. Tight, unambiguous, testable.
    • Prototype in Claude Design to validate concepts before committing engineering time.
    • Code and ship small PRs yourself with Claude Code when it is faster than handing off. PMs here live in the codebase.
    • Drive delivery end to end. Own scope, timeline, and quality. Run delivery in Linear, our product and project management surface.
    • Run the cadence with Engineering: standups, sprint reviews, unblocking, bug triage, and trade-off calls when things slip.
    • Coordinate across stakeholders: leadership, Engineering, Data, Credit, Operations, Risk, Compliance, and Marketing. Align scope, ship dates, and trade-offs across teams that have different incentives.
    • Own outcomes, not output. Tie every initiative to a revenue, growth, or risk metric. Track it post-launch and iterate until the metric moves.
    • Review AI-generated implementations, prototypes, and analyses for correctness, edge cases, and business fit.
    • Build feedback loops: customer signal, spec, AI-assisted build, metric, next spec. Compress the cycle.
    • Own launch comms and internal enablement.

    Required Qualifications

    • 5+ years in product management.
    • Direct experience shipping consumer or SME products in fintech, banking, lending, or payments.
    • Track record of owning outcomes. You measure yourself by the metric that moved revenue, active users, default rate, deposit growth, not by what was planned or shipped.
    • Strong stakeholder coordination. You drive alignment across the cross-functional set above without losing your own thread.
    • Strong written communication. You can write a spec a senior engineer does not need to ask questions about.
    • Comfortable reading production data yourself. SQL fluency, or willing to get there in week one.
    • Demonstrated proficiency with AI tools in your daily workflow Claude Code, Claude Design, Codex, and similar. You have shipped real work with them, not just experimented.
    • Comfortable reading and writing code, enough to ship a small PR with Claude Code.
    • High agency. You move from problem to validated solution to shipped product without waiting to be told.
    • Able to read financial regulatory guidance in the markets you operate in and translate it into product requirements.
    • Experience with credit products origination, scoring, collections and deposit products rate strategy, treasury, funding.
    • Exposure to foreign exchange, cross-border payments, stablecoins, or virtual account infrastructure.
    • Experience working with engineering teams that use AI coding agents in production workflows.
    • Prior work in emerging markets, particularly Africa, SEA, or LATAM fintech.
    • Founder or 0 to 1 product experience.
    • Familiarity with trade finance instruments invoice factoring, LPO financing, purchase order financing.

    Job Details

    Job Function

    Data, Analytics & AI

    Minimum Experience

    5 years

    Education Level

    Master’s Degree

    Languages

    English

    Additional Information

    How to Apply: Interested and qualified candidates should apply online via Umba's application portal at umba.applytojob.com.

    Show You Can Ship with AI Agents, Not Just Talk About Them

    This is an AI-native product role where the hiring team will look for proof you've used tools like Claude Code and Codex to ship real work—not just toy experiments. They want a PM who can write specs an AI agent can execute and who lives in the codebase when speed demands it.

    1. Prove your AI-native workflow: On your CV and in interviews, give concrete examples of products or features you've shipped using AI coding agents. Mention the specific tools (Claude Code, Claude Design, Codex) and the outcome—like a PR merged or a prototype that saved engineering time. Avoid vague claims like 'familiar with AI tools'; show a before-and-after of how AI changed your delivery speed.

    2. Prepare a spec sample: Bring a one-page product spec you've written that an engineer or AI agent could implement without follow-up questions. Highlight how you made it unambiguous—clear acceptance criteria, edge cases, and testable metrics. Be ready to walk through your thought process on structuring it for AI execution.

    3. Quantify your outcome ownership: For every product you list, state the metric you moved—revenue, active users, default rate, deposit growth—and by how much. Hiring managers here will press for numbers, not just responsibilities. If you improved loan approval rates or reduced churn, put the percentage in the bullet point.

    4. Brush up on SQL and data fluency: The role expects you to pull your own data, so practice writing queries on a sample fintech dataset. Be ready to explain how you'd size a market opportunity or validate a hypothesis using production data. Even if you're not an expert, show a learning plan that starts in week one.

    5. Understand the fintech regulatory landscape: Since you'll translate regulatory guidance into product requirements, review the basics of credit and deposit regulations in Kenya (e.g., CBK guidelines). Be prepared to discuss how you'd turn a compliance rule into a product feature without killing user experience.

    6. Show cross-functional coordination skills: This role touches Credit, Risk, Compliance, and Marketing—so come with stories of aligning teams with different incentives. Describe a time you drove a trade-off call or got sign-off from a skeptical stakeholder. Use the STAR method to keep it crisp.

    7. Highlight your 0-to-1 or founder experience: If you've built a product from scratch or worked in a startup, emphasize that. Talk about how you made prioritisation calls with limited data and how you handled ambiguity. This role is for someone who doesn't wait for permission—show that mindset.

    8. Prepare for a technical screen: Even though you're a PM, expect questions on code reading or writing small PRs. Review basic Git and Python or TypeScript syntax. Practice explaining how you'd use Claude Code to fix a bug or add a feature, and be ready to discuss edge cases you'd check.

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    Tags

    AI-native
    product management
    fintech
    Claude Code
    SQL