Product Excellence Lead

Are you a product leader who finds as much joy in architecting the "how" as you do in the "what"? Do you believe that high-quality design and rigorous data are the twin pillars of life-changing technology? If you are ready to set the gold standard for how digital products are built for impact, this role is for you.

The Company

Tiko is an African nonprofit committed to strengthening the potential and resilience of adolescent girls across Africa. We address the “Triple Threat” of unintended pregnancy, HIV infection, and sexual and gender-based violence by building local health ecosystems that provide stigma-free, no-cost, quality-assured services.

Our model brings together key local actors: community-based organizations (CBO) with peer mobilisers who act as health companions to girls; public and private health clinics that deliver care; and retail partners that redeem Tiko Miles -our behaviour-change incentive programme that rewards service uptake and feedback.

We invest in partners by strengthening CBO capacity, training frontline workers and providers, supporting clinic quality improvement, and compensating partners based on performance. Our technology platform connects all actors by enabling referrals, verifying service delivery, facilitating payments, and generating real-time data.

Tiko operates in seven countries: Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Zambia, and Nigeria, with additional offices in Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. For a clear overview of our work, we recommend watching this short video.

Tiko's people are young, and our culture is global and dynamic. Globally, our team is a vibrant community of over 240 enthusiastic colleagues. In Ethiopia, our impact is driven by a team of nearly 20 professionals, based in our Addis Ababa office or working remotely within the city. We are dedicated to implementing our projects in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MoH) and other key partners to deliver essential triple threat services.

The Job

We are seeking a Product Excellence Lead to serve as the architect of our product organisation’s effectiveness. In this pivotal role, you will report to the Director and sit at the intersection of Operations, Design, and Data, ensuring that Tiko builds the right things, the right way, for the right impact.

You won't just manage features; you will manage the standard of our product, the experience of our users, and the integrity of our product metrics. You will be responsible for defining and maintaining the "Tiko Product Way," ensuring our digital ecosystem, which addresses the "Triple Threat" of unintended pregnancy, HIV, and sexual violence, remains a safe, efficient, and dignified space for millions of adolescent girls.

Key Responsibilities

Product Operations & Standards

Implement the PDLC: Execute and enforce the Tiko Product Development Lifecycle, maintaining a comprehensive handbook for PRDs, roadmaps, and release protocols.

Tooling Strategy: Oversee the administration and integration of the product team’s stack (Jira, Productboard, Notion), ensuring a "Single Source of Truth" for strategic alignment.

Cross-Functional Alignment: Facilitate quarterly planning and OKR setting, acting as the bridge between tech and non-tech teams to ensure high-impact, feasible roadmaps.

UX Leadership & Design Excellence

Team Mentorship: Line manage and grow a team of high-performing UX/UI Designers, fostering a culture of continuous feedback and creative excellence.

User-Sensitive Design: Champion design principles that prioritise the safety, privacy, and dignity of vulnerable users.

Contextual Problem Solving: Oversee solutions tailored for low-resource settings, accounting for low connectivity, limited device access, and the unique constraints of our users.

Product Metrics & Data Governance

Data Leadership: Line manage our Decision Scientist to ensure actionable insights are delivered for strategic product decision-making.

Measurement Governance: Maintain success metrics and lightweight experimentation frameworks to ensure evidence-based decisions across the product team.

Insights Enablement: Oversee the creation of product-focused dashboards that support discovery and continuous improvement.

Strategic Discovery & New Initiatives

Opportunity Exploration: Lead early-stage discovery and hypothesis testing for new product concepts aligned with Tiko’s 2030 goals.

Insight Translation: Translate validated opportunities into clear recommendations for scaling within the broader Product teams.

About You

You are a strategic thinker who values documentation, transparency, and the power of a well-organised process. You describe yourself as a servant-leader, thriving in remote, multicultural environments where collaboration and mentorship are the default.

You possess a rare hybrid perspective: you speak the language of human-centred design and empathy just as fluently as the language of statistical significance and predictive modelling. You are motivated by high-scale impact and enjoy the challenge of building sophisticated systems for complex, low-resource environments.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in Product Management, with a proven track record of managing cross-functional teams.

Deep Design Collaboration: Extensive experience working closely with UX/UI functions and a strong eye for user-sensitive design.

Technical & Analytical Literacy: Demonstrated ability to oversee data science initiatives and implement rigorous product measurement frameworks.

Contextual Expertise: Experience building digital products for African markets or similar environments (addressing challenges like high latency and device fragmentation).

Operational Rigour: Proven track record of implementing the processes and tooling required to improve team efficiency and output quality.

Communication: Excellent English skills with a focus on clear, asynchronous communication and high-quality documentation.

The Rewards
In Portugal, the gross salary for the role is €4,696 - €6,261

We will offer you a salary in this bracket depending on your level of experience and how it relates to your future colleagues. 

Great secondary benefits, such as health and accident insurance and a work-from-home package

A personal development budget

Unlimited holidays, if you can make it work with your team you’re good to go

Growth opportunities

A product to help shape as we grow, to leave your mark on how we do things

A vision that we trust that you will do your job without us having to invent unnecessary rules and regulations

The details

Interested? Click Apply for This Job! Want more information? Check out our website tiko.org or contact our Global Recruiter. We only accept applications through the apply links, not by email.

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Tiko prioritizes integrity in our workplace and respects your privacy.

Tiko is committed to preventing any type of unwanted behaviour by its employees at work, including sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse, lack of integrity and financial misconduct. This is why we will do reference and background screening checks on successful candidates before hiring. Tiko also participates in the Inter Agency Misconduct Disclosure Scheme. As part of this scheme, we will request information from your previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and/or sexual harassment during your employment, or incidents under investigation when you left employment. By applying for this position, you confirm you have read and understood these recruitment procedures.

We value your privacy and understand the importance of safeguarding your personal data. We invite you to review our privacy notice for the recruitment process to understand how we collect, use, and protect your personal data during the recruitment process. Click here
to view the document. By applying for this position, you acknowledge that you have read and understood our privacy notice.