[Hiring] Senior Product Manager @Umba

Role 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, shipping small PRs directly when it is faster than handing off.
• Coordinate the stakeholders that turn a product into a business.
• Own the outcomes those products generate.

The bar is moving 10x faster without sacrificing quality.

Responsibilities

The role spans two domains:

Strategy and Discovery

• 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.
• Make prioritisation calls across very different product lines and defend them with numbers.
• Track competitor moves in the markets you operate in and translate them into product decisions.

Execution and Delivery

• Write product and technical specifications that engineers and AI coding agents can implement directly.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Own launch comms and internal enablement.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in product management.
• Direct experience shipping consumer or SME products in fintech, banking, lending, or payments.
• Track record of owning outcomes.
• Strong stakeholder coordination.
• Strong written communication.
• Comfortable reading production data yourself.
• Demonstrated proficiency with AI tools in your daily workflow.
• Comfortable reading and writing code.
• High agency.
• Able to read financial regulatory guidance in the markets you operate in and translate it into product requirements.

Highly Preferred

• 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.

Bonus

• Founder or 0 to 1 product experience.
• Familiarity with trade finance instruments (invoice factoring, LPO financing, purchase order financing).

Application Requirements

• Salary expectations in Kenyan Shillings.
• A short note on something you built end to end using AI: what it was, how you used AI to build it, what shipped.
• Valid work authorisation for Kenya.

Method of Application

Umba is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from all qualified individuals. Due to the urgency, interviews will be on a rolling basis.